


Keeping Secrets

by AllMyNamesAreTaken, MarvelMinx (AllMyNamesAreTaken)



Category: Actor RPF, American (US) Actor RPF, Chris Evans (actor) - Fandom
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Baby, Comfort, Complete, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friendship, Hospitals, Illnesses, Implied Sexual Content, Needles, Parenthood, Possibly a slow burn who am I to say?, Referenced Vomiting, Referenced blood, Tension, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2020-07-27 09:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 77,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllMyNamesAreTaken/pseuds/AllMyNamesAreTaken, https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllMyNamesAreTaken/pseuds/MarvelMinx
Summary: Harvey Brooks spent her childhood moving all over the country until her parents finally settled in Massachusetts. She'd never had a proper friend until she met Chris Evans on their first day as freshmen in high school. They quickly became close friends who kept each other's secrets. When Chris comes to her one night asking for her help, she makes a decision that starts a chain of events leading to the ultimate secret. Years later, when tragedy strikes, the truth finally comes out, changing both their lives and the lives of everyone around them.





	1. Chapter 1

**PROLOGUE**

**2006**  
  
“_It was a dark and stormy night_…”  
“No kidding,” Harvey muttered as a flash of lightning lit up the night sky followed almost immediately by a clap of thunder so loud that it drowned out the howling wind and shook the house. Rain lashed at the windows so hard that she had to turn up the stereo to hear her audiobook.  
She had just gotten comfortable, her feet tucked beneath her and her mug clasped in her hands, when the doorbell rang. It was almost ten o’clock and she couldn’t imagine who would be calling so late. With a frustrated sigh, she put down her tea and padded into the hallway to answer the door, pulling her sweater tightly around her.  
The wind snatched the door from her grip as she opened it, slamming it back against the wall and snatching up the mail that sat on the sideboard, swirling the envelopes into the air. “Chris, what the hell?” She stood back to let him in and he added his weight to the door to help her push it closed again.  
“I’m sorry.”  
“What are you doing here? I thought you were in LA?”  
“I was, but I had to come back. I had to see you.”  
“Oh my god, you’re drenched.” She watched him drip onto the wooden floor.  
“I walked.”  
“From where?”  
“My place.”  
She rolled her eyes and muttered ‘idiot’ under her breath. “Stay there.” She ran upstairs and returned with a towel, a dry t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. “What is so important that you fly across the country and walk three miles in this storm?”  
He rubbed his hair with the towel and looked at her ruefully. “I need your help. You’re the smartest person I know, Harvs.”  
“That is a damning indictment on the rest of your social circle,” she said, gathering the mail that was now scattered across the hall. “I just made tea, do you want some?”  
“Yes please.” Chris shrugged off his wet jacket before pulling his t-shirt over his head. He caught the clean top that Harvey threw at him. “Hey, I’ve been looking for this everywhere.”  
“You left it here a couple of months ago.” She held out the sweatpants. “Here. Put your wet stuff in the washer and put it on to spin. I’ll get your tea.”  
Dropping the pile of envelopes onto the sideboard, she turned and headed for the kitchen. She wished she wasn’t wearing pyjamas covered in penguins with a matching pair of bed socks, or that she’d dragged a brush through her hair but Chris was far too sweet to notice such things. He was one of her oldest and most definitely closest friends. They’d met when her family had moved to Massachusetts at the start of their high school freshman year. Prior to that, they’d moved around so much that she was never in one place long enough to make friends. Her locker had been next to his and he was the first friendly face she saw as, with a sense of resigned trepidation, she’d started at yet another new school.  
Now he spent a lot of his time in LA, his movie career really taking off, while she pursued her career in Massachusetts. She missed not having him around all the time so it was always good to see him whenever he came home. Pondering on his enigmatic visit, she poured him a cup of tea and added milk. She was utterly perplexed as to why he would walk through a raging storm late at night. Why not just drive?  
When she returned to the sitting room, Chris was sitting on the sofa, his damp hair sticking up in clumps where he’d rubbed it with the towel. She put his mug on the coffee table and sat down beside him. “Are you warm enough?”  
“Yes, thanks.” He nodded, his eyes closed. “What are you listening to?”  
“_A Wrinkle in Time_.” Finding the remote down the side of the sofa, she turned the stereo off. The storm was still beating her house and she began to fervently hope it didn’t blow down.  
“It’s crazy out there,” he muttered.  
“You were crazy to walk here. What if you’d been hit by debris?”  
“I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. I’m supposed to be at an event in LA tomorrow night. I’ll have to get a flight back first thing.”  
“I’ll take you to the airport,” she said automatically, leaning forward to pick up her mug. “Could you not just have called? This all seems very dramatic.”  
“You know me. I can’t live without a bit of drama.” His fingers tapped a beat on his leg and he avoided her eye.  
“So,” she prompted, “what’s going on?”  
He sighed and leant forward. Elbows on his knees, he dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his face. “I’ve fucked up, Harvey,” he said wearily. “I’ve really fucked up.”  
She’d never seen him in such anguish. On the contrary, he was usually annoyingly laidback about everything. “Can we fix it?”  
“I don’t know. I hope so.”  
Harvey laid her hand on the back of his neck, feeling the tension in his muscles. “Do you want to tell me about it?”  
He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Can I stay? Please?”  
“Of course! You don’t have to ask.”  
“Thank you.”  
“Are you hungry?”  
He shook his head. “Can you put the book back on and we can cuddle a while?”  
“Sure.” She turned the stereo back on and the CD started from the beginning. Chris put his arm around her shoulders as she curled up beside him.  
“_It was a dark and stormy night_…”  
The storm seemed to choose that moment to kick up a gear, if that were even possible. With each gust of wind, the walls of the house shuddered. “Do you think my house is going to fall down?”  
Chris smiled and shook his head, reaching up to tweak her nose. “Your house is made of sterner stuff than a Nor’easter.”  
“I hope you’re right.” She pulled a throw from the back of the couch and covered them both.  
“I got someone pregnant,” he said quickly, as if trying to get the words out before he changed his mind.  
Harvey blinked, unsure if she’d really heard what she thought she heard. “What?”  
He sighed, rubbing his hands over his face again. “I got someone pregnant.”  
“Kayla?” Then, when he shook his head, “Wow…”  
“She doesn’t want it. She wants to have it adopted.”  
“How do you feel about that?”  
“I want it, but… I don’t think I can. I can’t even keep a plant alive so how would I cope with a baby?”  
“What about your mom?”  
“I thought about it but how would we explain it to everyone else?”  
“What do you want? Do you want to persuade her to keep it? If you set her up in a nice apartment and paid a hefty sum every month, she might go for it.”  
He shook his head. “She already has money. She’s adamant that adoption is the only option. Harvs, I really can’t afford for this to get out and I don’t know what to do.”  
Harvey bit her lip and frowned. “This is what you want me to help you with?”  
“I don’t know how though.”  
“Oh, good. I’m glad it’s not just me,” she said faintly. “I’ll need some time to think about it.”  
“You’ve got thirty-five weeks.”  
“I can’t believe it, Chris. I mean, I know you can be irresponsible, but –”  
“Please don’t,” he begged. “I can’t take a lecture, especially from you.”  
Harvey put her arms around him and held him as tightly as she could. She asked quietly, “Who is she?”  
“I met her in a club one night a few weeks ago. I hooked up with her a couple of times afterwards but it was nothing serious.”  
“I take it you and Kayla are off right now?”  
“I can’t keep track. I guess…”  
Harvey bit her tongue, holding back her thoughts on his inability to keep track of his own relationships. “Do you want something stronger than tea?”  
“You mean, like, alcohol?” He looked scandalised, as if they were fourteen again and raiding her father’s liquor stash.  
She giggled, nudging him off of her with her shoulder before getting up and heading for the drinks cabinet. “I’ve only got brandy. You finished my whisky the last time you were here.”  
“Works for me.”  
She poured two glasses and handed him one as she sat back beside him. “You know, Chris, if you’re not ready to look after a child then maybe adoption is the best choice.”  
“I can’t explain it. I want to, I just know that I can’t. Not right now.”  
“You can’t hit pause on the pregnancy until you’re ready.”  
“I know,” he muttered, staring deep into his brandy glass as if the answer to his problems lay at the bottom. “I really want there to be another way.”  
Harvey wasn’t sure that there was but, again, she held her tongue. Instead, she reached out and rubbed his back, then held him when he leaned against her. “We’ll figure something out, Chris. I promise.”  
She felt bad for promising a solution when she couldn’t see an alternative. The only thing might simply be to make him understand that it was for the best at this point in his life. As much as she loved Chris, as great a friend as he was, she couldn’t imagine him looking after a child alone, not when he was still so much of a child himself and enjoying his bachelorhood. Not to mention that he was trying to establish his career and, as cold and cynical as it sounded, it would be a real setback for him.  
“What time do you need to be at the airport?”  
“About seven. Is that too early?”  
She shook her head. “No, I’ll drop you on the way to work.”  
Harvey tried to process everything he'd said all while they finished their brandies, then they called it a night. Chris went to throw his clothes in the dryer while she went upstairs and took her turn in the bathroom. He stayed over so often that she had a little corner for his toiletries and he had a drawer in her dresser. By the time he finished in the bathroom, she was already in bed with the quilt tucked under her chin as she watched him climb in beside her.  
“Did you set an alarm?”  
“Yeah, for five. Is that too early?”  
He shook his head, beating the pillow into submission. “I’ll just lounge in bed for half an hour while you get ready.”  
“It’s alright for some,” she said, rolling her eyes.  
He grinned, leaning across to kiss her cheek. “Goodnight Harvs.”  
“Night.”  
She slept for a while, maybe four hours. Then she stared up at the ceiling, her mind working overtime. She could hear Chris breathing in the darkness but it wasn’t the deep, even breathing of sleep. “Are you awake?” she whispered, turning her head on the pillow to look at him.  
“Yeah,” he mumbled sleepily.  
She turned over to face him, trying to make out his features in the darkness of her room. “I think maybe I should go to LA and speak to her.”  
“Yeah?”  
“Yeah. She – Dammit, Chris, what is this poor girl’s name?”  
“Faye.”  
“Faye might be more comfortable speaking to someone else. I might be able to get to the bottom of her reasons and maybe we’ll be able to come to an arrangement.”  
“Do you want to come with me in the morning?”  
“I can’t skip work but I’ll fly out on Friday evening for the weekend.”  
“Shall I invite her over or…?”  
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “I think it would be better for us to meet somewhere neutral. Maybe a quiet hotel?”  
“I’ll give her a call and fix something up.”  
With a sigh, Harvey rolled back onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. “This is fucked up.”  
Chris snorted, also turning onto his back. “To be honest, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened sooner.”  
“So am I. You’ve got to start being careful.”  
“I know,” he muttered, a petulant edge to his voice.  
“Don’t be that dude. Don’t be the guy who thinks that birth control is on the woman. You were raised better than that.”  
“I don’t! I’m not! I just… I hate condoms.” His voice trailed off lamely.  
She slowly turned her head to look at him. “What?”  
“Harvey –”  
“You’ve knocked a girl up. You’re going to be a fucking dad. Put a glove on it before you sire a whole brood. Or worse.”  
There was silence for a long, drawn-out minute. “I’m sorry.”  
She shrugged. “It doesn’t affect me. But you’re almost twenty-five, Chris. You’re far too young to end up with a lifelong disease but at the same time you need to grow the hell up and take responsibility for your actions.”  
“That’s why I love you, Harvey. You’re never afraid to tell me about myself.” He turned to face her, curling his arm around her waist and pulling her close.  
“Someone’s got to not be blowing smoke up your ass.” Laughing, she tried to wriggle from his grip but he held her tighter and pulled her closer, covering her face with kisses. “Get off me, you loser!”  
He chuckled and let her go. “What time is it anyway?”  
She turned to look at the clock. “About half an hour before we have to get up. Did you sleep at all?”  
“A little.”  
She kicked off the covers and sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. “You take first shower and I’ll make breakfast.”  
Chris grabbed her hand. “Harvey?”  
“Mmm?”  
“Thank you.”  
“I haven’t done anything yet.”  
“If anyone can come up with a solution, it’s you.”  
Harvey smiled but quickly hid her face. She wished she had his confidence.

Somehow, it was still Friday when Harvey arrived at Chris’s place in LA, if only for a few more minutes. She was tired from a twelve-hour shift and her feet were sore and blistered from, foolishly, trying to break in a new pair of shoes. Fortunately, Chris awaited her arrival with Chinese takeout and a box of beers. After a quick shower and bandaging her poor feet, she joined him on the couch.  
“How was your day, dear?”  
She scowled at him, reaching for some chopsticks and a box of chicken lo mein. “Shitty. Management decided that we would do room inspections today, which just riles up housekeeping because they think it’s about them rather than the rooms in general.” She sighed heavily. “You don’t want to hear about hotel politics.”  
He shrugged, “It’s better than my day.”  
“Why, what happened?”  
“There was a movie I really wanted but I didn’t get it and another project I was interested in got shelved. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about me. I didn’t even ask how you are the other night.”  
“We did have other pressing issues to discuss.”  
“Speaking of which, Faye asked if you can meet her at midday instead. Something’s come up.”  
“Sure. It’s not as if I have other plans.”  
“What are you going to say to her?”  
She poked at her noodles. “I really don’t know. I guess I just want to hear her side of the story. I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do to change her mind.”  
He sighed, pushing his food away. His blue eyes were big and sad and Harvey felt a definite tug on her heartstrings. As much as she wanted him to learn a valuable lesson from this, he was obviously in a lot of emotional pain and turmoil. “I know I’m being selfish, expecting someone else to take care of this for me. For worrying about what it would do to my career instead of just manning up and taking the baby.”  
She put down her food and looked at him. “If I thought for one second that that would work out, I wouldn’t even be here. I know that’s not an option for you. And I don’t think you’re being selfish. You’re being responsible. Even if it is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.”  
“If an alternative exists, I want to keep the baby out of the spotlight. I don’t want anyone to know it’s mine.”  
Harvey frowned. “Even your family?”  
He fiddled with a chopstick, balancing it on the tip of a finger before twirling it between his fingers. He always fidgeted when he was uncomfortable. “Yes.”  
She sat back with a sigh, her lips pursed. “Chris…”  
“I know! It’s a douche move.”  
“I don’t get why you won’t at least confide in them. None of your family would betray you to the press.”  
“No, they wouldn’t,” he muttered, rubbing his hand over his hair. “But then my aunts and uncles find out, my cousins, they tell people and they tell people and before you know it…”  
She was silent for the longest time. No matter how hard she thought about it, which angle she came at it from, adoption seemed to be the only possible solution. A heavy blanket of tiredness settled over her. “I need to sleep. Can I take your car tomorrow?”  
“Sure. I’m not going anywhere.”  
She got stiffly to her feet, pausing to kiss Chris on the forehead and ruffle his hair. “Don’t sit there brooding all night.”  
“I won’t.”  
But it was already light when he climbed into bed beside her. She roused as he moved close to her, reaching out to hold her. After that, she couldn’t get back to sleep. She watched the sky lighten outside the huge windows and listened to his quiet snores.  
She loved Chris. Not romantically, but deeply, like a brother. They’d been through a lot and kept a lot of secrets for each other. From the day they’d met, he’d taken her under his wing. Her name hadn’t been Harvey back then. Within the first week, upon learning that her parents had moved to Massachusetts to make it easier for her to attend Harvard, Chris and her new friends had christened her with the nickname. Now everyone used it and sometimes she forgot to respond when people used her actual name.  
She had liked Chris instantly. He had been sweet and, somewhat, innocent back then, with braces and a 90s boy band haircut. A little shy, a little awkward, but kind and funny. He’d guided her from class to class, made room for her at his table for lunch and, discovering that she lived only a few streets away from him, walked home with her after school. It was the first truly organic friendship she’d ever had.  
Her father was an IT specialist at a time when IT was exploding. They moved at least once a year, sometimes more, her dad taking short contracts to overhaul a company’s IT systems and, once done, moving on to the next job. Her mom, an elementary school teacher, could always find work wherever they went. In their quest to give her and her older sister the best life possible, they’d given them the worst childhood. Unsettled and friendless, her sister began acting out. Harvey felt that she, too, would have gone down the same promiscuous, drunken road if it hadn’t been for Chris and their little gang.  
Things happened incredibly fast toward the end of high school. Chris spent a summer in New York working for an agent, then suddenly he was graduating early and moving to LA to film a TV show. Meanwhile, Harvey was Harvard bound for a degree in economics, which she had hoped would eventually lead to an MBA from her alma mater. Now, after four years in a hotel management programme, she would be returning to Harvard in the fall.   
Carefully, she slid out of bed, not wanting to disturb him. It was almost six am and hazy sunshine lit up the windows. She had lived in LA once for a few months. All she remembered was the constant sunshine and the traffic. Nothing had changed. She went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water, then looked in the fridge but found nothing but eggs, half a jar of pesto and the remnants of the previous night’s takeout. She wrinkled her nose and dug in the cupboard for a half-eaten box of crackers she’d left on her last visit, then went to retrieve her purse.  
She had an idea. An idea of an idea. It was a thought that kept popping up at the back of her mind. The only way out she could see. After hunting down Chris’s laptop and powering it up, she curled up on the couch with a notebook. She scribbled page after page of thoughts and questions, then searched online for answers as best she could. Chris would be full of objections and she’d need to have an argument for as many as she could think of before she even thought about discussing it with him.  
  
Chris had arranged for Harvey to meet Faye at a small boutique hotel in Santa Monica. It took her over an hour to get there and she arrived twenty minutes late. The waiter showed her to a table where a pretty brunette sat, sipping on a glass of iced water. She was almost indistinguishable from any one of his girlfriends.  
“Hi, I’m Harvey,” she said as she shook Faye’s hand. “I’m so sorry I’m late, the traffic was a nightmare.”  
“It’s okay,” Faye assured her in with a faint Texan accent, “I figured you were held up.”  
Harvey ordered a soda and sat down, looking at the woman across the table. “Thank you for seeing me.”  
She shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s a purpose but Chris seems to be struggling with my decision. I figured you might help explain it to him.”  
“Why don’t you explain it to me?”  
Faye looked down at the table and fiddled with her cutlery. “I don’t want the baby. I won’t have an abortion, but I can’t keep it and look after it. My family would disown me. They’re strict conservative Christians and if I had a baby outside of marriage, they’d never speak to me again. And regardless of that, I have school. I want to be a medical researcher. I don’t want or need a kid to complicate things and make my life difficult.”  
Harvey frowned. She hadn’t expected her to be so brutally honest. “How are you going to hide a pregnancy from them?”  
“I’m telling them I’m going travelling. I’ll stay with a friend in Bakersfield until after the birth.”  
“Feel free to tell me to mind my own business, but how did this happen?”  
Faye ran her fingers through her long dark hair, flipping it over her shoulder. “I take birth control, if that’s what you mean. I was just recovering from an infection and I’d been on antibiotics. My doctor said, _afterwards_, that might have stopped the pill from being effective long enough for me to ovulate. I’m not irresponsible.”  
Harvey held her hands up in a placating gesture. “I’m not here to judge you. I need to understand.”  
“Who are you? I mean, to Chris?”  
“We’re friends. Good friends. I’ve known him since high school.”  
“Does he often pick up girls in bars?”  
She smiled a humourless smile. “I don’t think so. I try not to get involved in his private life unless he asks.”  
Faye nodded in understanding. “This hasn’t happened before?”  
“Never.”  
“I think he’s lucky he got me. Other people might want to make trouble for him. I probably want it to go away just as much as he does.”  
Harvey took a breath, phrasing the next question carefully. “You said you won’t have an abortion, is that because of your beliefs or…?”  
Faye looked at something over Harvey’s shoulder for a second before looking back. “Kind of. I try not to let my parents’ views on life colour my own but I just can’t bring myself to take that option. I almost wish I could, it would be so much easier on everyone involved.”  
The waiter returned with Harvey’s soda and asked if they were ready to order. Once he’d gone, she leaned back in her seat. “Does it matter to you who adopts the baby? If, perhaps, someone in Chris’s family were to adopt it, would that be okay?”  
Faye shrugged, sipping at her water. “It makes no difference to me. I’m not trying to keep Chris from his child. This is about me. I need to surrender my parental rights and be allowed to move on.”  
“I’m not going to insult you by asking if you think you’ll change your mind further down the line.”  
“No.” she said emphatically. “I cannot do this. If you held a gun to my head, I wouldn’t be able to do this.”  
She believed her. The poor girl hadn’t asked for this. Harvey let out a long, slow breath. “I think I have a solution that will make everyone happy. But I need to run it past Chris first.”  
  
“No, Harvey. No. Absolutely not.”  
She took a breath, trying to stay patient. “Chris –”  
“Harvey!” He barked, making her jump. “I said no. You are not adopting this baby. It’s a fucking stupid idea.”  
“It’s the only solution. Think about how this is going to affect everyone else. Your family. Your mom will be devastated when she finds out you had a kid and you didn’t even tell her. I can’t even get my head around that. I know you want to keep this a secret but you tell your mom everything, she’s going to feel so betrayed. Your dad and your brother and your sisters, too. This is their grandchild, their niece or nephew, you can’t let it be adopted out and take away their chance of a relationship. I feel incredibly shitty about perpetuating your lie but at least this way, when you’re ready, your child will be on your doorstep. They’ll have a relationship with him or her already. I’m not saying it’s not going to be tough but it’s a lot better than the alternative.”  
He glared at her, mad that she had invoked his family, his greatest weakness. Harvey knew that she was right. His mom was the neighbourhood mom, all the kids confided in her. A secret of this magnitude kept by her own son would end her. He changed tack. “You’re just about to go back to Harvard for your MBA. How are you going to do both?”  
“I won’t be able to do both,” she said quietly. “I’ll put the MBA on hold. I can get in again another time.”  
Chris clenched his fists. “No! You’ve been working towards this for years.”  
“You’re not prioritising!” she yelled, making him drawback in surprise. “Your child is more important than a piece of paper from Harvard! You need to put this child first. You came to me for help. I am cleaning up your mess, Evans, when what I really should be doing is making you face your own fucking music. You’re not thinking about it properly.”  
“No, you’re not thinking about it properly. It’s ridiculous. Why would you throw your life away like that? And for me?”  
“I don’t consider it throwing my life away. And please do not labour under the illusion that I am doing this for you. I’ll be doing it for literally everyone but you. My priority is keeping your child close to its family.”  
He sighed, visibly softening. He took a step towards her and folded her in his arms. “I’m sorry. It’s the most incredible thought but I can’t ask you to do it.”  
“You’re not asking me. I’m offering.” She pulled away from him, pacing up and down in front of the window. “I can take a couple of years and reapply to Harvard. Twenty-five is the minimum age anyway, having another couple of years of experience won’t hurt my chances of getting in again.”  
“This is going to hold you back.”  
Frustrated, she snapped again. “From what? I’m a hotelier, for fuck’s sake. I don’t think Western civilisation is going to grind to a halt because I’m not running a five-star hotel before I’m thirty.”  
He rolled his eyes at her and shook his head. “Have you even thought about how you’re going to explain this to people?”  
“Kind of. I was missing a piece but Faye gave me an idea. She’s telling people she’s going travelling but she’s hiding out at a friend’s house. I’ll tell people I’m going to have a baby. It’s not strictly a lie. The programme at work is all but finished anyway. I’ll move here for a few months. I’ll be close to Faye and I’ll be able to go to appointments with her so she’s not alone. While all that’s going on, I can apply for the adoption. Then, when the baby’s born, we’ll come back to Boston.”  
Chris sighed, shaking his head, obviously lost for words. Harvey knew that he was thinking about it. Imagining what it would be like to have his child living just a few miles away with his best friend, rather than who knew where with a total stranger. “When would you move here?”  
“As soon as possible. Within the next two or three weeks. I’ll tell my parents that I have to do six months at another hotel. Once I’m here I’ll tell them the news.”  
“Only you and I will know the truth?”  
She nodded. “Everyone will think it’s mine.”  
“I don’t know, Harvey. It’s a lot for you to take on.”  
“I know you’ll be there whenever you can. People will think you’re just being nice because we’re such good friends and I’m a single mom.”  
“Come here.” He pulled her into his arms again, resting his chin on top of her head. “This is crazy, Harvey. I know you’ve made it seem like it makes sense but think about what you’re saying.”  
“I’ve thought about nothing else since you told me. Either I adopt the baby or you lose it. It’s up to you.”  
“That’s harsh.”  
“No, Chris, it’s reality.”  
“You can move in here.”  
She shook her head and looked up at him. “I can’t. You have friends and family here far too often. I’ll find myself a little apartment somewhere, maybe in Bakersfield where Faye’s staying. Somewhere I’m not going to bump into anyone we know.”  
“At least let me pay for it. I’ll pay for everything. And I’ll find you an attorney.”  
Relief coursed through her. Finally, he’d come around. “You don’t have to do that.”  
“I want to do that. It’s the least I can do. But listen to me, Harvey,” he gripped her by the shoulders, looking directly into her eyes. “If you change your mind, if you decide that you can’t do it, I’ll understand and I will never hold it against you.”  
She felt her anger ebbing away at last. She hadn’t had time to come to terms with her decision fully but changing her mind wasn’t an option. Chris needed to come to terms with the enormity of what they were doing, with the lies they would have to tell to every single important person in their lives because she wasn’t going to go through that on her own. “I’m not going to change my mind. But you have to be supportive. This is only going to fly in front of a judge if you’re one hundred percent behind me.”  
“I am, I promise. I’ll do whatever you need.”

  
“Who’s the father?”  
Harvey rolled her eyes, tucking the phone under her chin as she stirred the marinara sauce that simmered on the stove. “He’s not in the picture. It doesn’t matter.”  
“It doesn’t matter?!” Her mother sounded as if she were about to burst a blood vessel. “What about child support? I suppose you expect me and your father to pick up the bill.”  
That was unfair, she’d never relied on them for anything. She took a long, deep breath and counted silently to ten. “It’s not a mess, Mom, and I don’t need your help. I just thought you’d be interested in your first grandchild is all.”  
“I expected this from your sister but not you. Is this why you ran off to California, so you wouldn’t have to face everyone? You’re supposed to be going back to Harvard in the fall.”  
She dipped a teaspoon into the sauce and tasted it. Perfect. “I can reapply to Harvard later.”  
“You’ve never expressed an interest in having a baby…”  
Harvey couldn’t deny this. They weren’t really a lovey-dovey family and she hardly ever discussed her personal life with them. “I’ve always wanted children, Ma. This is a happy accident.”  
“If you won’t have an abortion, at least consider adoption.” Her mom’s tone was wheedling and Harvey knew it was because she was concerned about what other people would say about her daughter being a single mom, rather than any regard for her. The Cape Cod set would be clutching their pearls at the news.  
She almost choked on the slug of red wine she’d just taken from the bottle. “You know what, I will think about adoption. Very seriously.” It felt good to say something that wasn’t a lie. “Is dad around?”  
“He’s having dinner at the club tonight. I’ll get him to call you later.”  
She sighed. There went her chance to tell him first. “Bye Ma.”  
Throwing the phone onto the counter, she turned off the heat under the sauce and glanced at the clock. Chris was coming over for dinner later and she needed to run to the store for a few things before he arrived. They had rented a small apartment, about thirty minutes out of Bakersfield. It was simply furnished but clean and had a balcony large enough for her to sit out and drink her coffee in the morning with the California sunshine on her face. Chris had also leased a car for her to make it easier to get around, for which she was grateful.  
It had been a difficult few months. Chris had found a great adoption attorney, without whom she doubted it would be happening. Because she would be taking the baby to Massachusetts soon after the birth, they had to involve the authorities there and the laws were different than in California. Faye had agreed to have pre-adoption counselling. It wasn't a prerequisite but it showed the Massachusetts judge that she’d carefully considered all of her options. Meanwhile, Harvey had been going to parenting classes which, more than anything, had been incredibly helpful.  
Even Chris seemed suddenly mature and capable. He was preparing everything back home and barely a day went by when she didn’t get an email or a text message, asking what brand of stroller she wanted or whether the baby would need a wet wipe warmer. She had written him a list of essentials but she knew she’d return home to find her spare room decorated with a Disney mural and crammed with plushies and every bit of baby paraphernalia he could lay his hands on.  
Back at her apartment complex, she found a black Lexus parked in the space beside hers. She grinned as she climbed out. “Perfect timing.”  
“For once in my life.” Chris walked around his car and kissed her cheek. “How are you?”  
“I’m good.” She took a breath. “I just spoke to my mom.”  
“You told her? How did she take it?”  
“Like I thought she would.” Harvey opened the trunk and let Chris gather the beer and wine while she took the lighter bags and balanced a cake box in one hand. “Like a personal affront to her reputation. The shame of an unmarried single mom providing her first grandchild.”  
“I’m sorry.”  
Harvey shrugged, slamming the trunk shut and leading him up the stairs to her second-floor apartment. “Not your fault.”  
Chris laughed quietly. “Finally, something that isn’t my fault.”  
“Enjoy it while it lasts.”  
“How’s Faye?”  
“Good. She’s getting big. The sonogram is this week, have you thought any more about whether or not you want to know what gender it is?”  
“I don’t know. I kinda want to be surprised but knowing would make shopping so much easier.”  
Harvey stopped halfway up the stairs and turned to look at him. “Stop shopping, Chris. We just need bottles, diapers and a few sleepsuits.”  
He rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks turning pink. “It’s a bit late for that.”  
She sighed, continuing on up the stairs. “I thought so.”  
“It’s just everything looks so cute and I want to make sure you have everything you need.”  
“I know, but we really won’t need a lot.” She struggled to get her keys from her pocket and he took the cake box from her hands. “And you don’t want people to start gossiping about why Chris is buying a load of stuff for Harvey’s apparently fatherless baby.”  
He rolled his eyes, following her into the apartment. “Because we’re best friends.”  
She dumped her bags on the kitchen counter and started to unpack, putting the salad into the refrigerator. “The sole reason we are doing this is because you don’t want people to know it’s your baby.”  
“I know.”  
“Then stop acting like it is.”  
“Harvs,” he caught her by the wrist, halting her journey between the refrigerator and the shopping. “I don’t want you to have to worry about a thing, and I’m going to be there to help you as much as I can. If that means people talk then let them. I refuse to come and go in the night.”  
“I suppose at first it won’t matter so much. Everyone is going to be so surprised when I come back with a baby that they’re not going to notice who’s coming and going. And I guess we’ll deal with it later when it happens.”  
Chris smiled and tweaked her nose, laughing at her outraged expression. He dug in the bags and helped her put a few things away, making room in the refrigerator for his beers and automatically putting her wine in the freezer. “I don’t think I want to know if it’s a boy or a girl. I think I want the surprise.”  
“Okay.”  
“Are you going to find out?”  
Harvey paused from packing pasta into the cupboard. She really hadn’t thought about it from her own perspective. “I guess I’ll wait, too.”  
“You don’t have to.”  
“I know. But if I were pregnant, I don’t think I’d want to know.”  
He was quiet for a moment, then, “Is this weird for you?”  
“Uh…” she faltered, her brain suddenly swamped with a hundred things that, yes, were weird for her. “A little. It’s certainly something I never saw myself being involved in. And I’ve never really considered adoption when I’ve thought about having my own family.”  
Chris opened up two beers and handed her one. “I was lying in bed thinking about it the other day. You’re going to be my kid’s mom. I never imagined that happening.”  
“Me neither.” Harvey sipped at the beer, trying to force her thoughts back into some kind of order. She’d tried not to think too far into the future but what would happen when she met someone, someone she maybe wanted to settle down with? What would she tell him about the child she already had? About why she did what she did?  
“I’ve upset you, haven’t I? I’m sorry.”  
“No, you haven’t. I…there’s a lot I haven’t thought about.”  
“Harvey, if you’re having second thoughts—”  
“No, I’m not and I won’t, I keep telling you this. There are things I’m not letting myself think about.”  
“Such as?”  
She looked down at her beer bottle, rubbing her thumb over the rim. “Five, ten, twenty years from now. How this will still be impacting our lives. They’re not negative thoughts, just overwhelming. You know I hate uncertainty.”  
“And change, and spontaneity, and olives.”  
She laughed. “Especially olives.”  
“It’s okay to not have a plan. I know how much you hate not to.”  
“Chris… do you think I’m going to be a good mom?”  
His expression softened and he wrapped her in his arms. “You’re going to be the best.”  
“You’re not just saying that?” she asked, her voice muffled by the flannel of his shirt.  
She felt his laugh reverberate through his chest. “No. I’ve always thought you’d be a good mom.”  
“I’m scared.”  
“I know, honey.” He stroked her hair down her back with one hand. “It’s okay to be scared. I’m scared, too.”  
Harvey sighed heavily and pulled away. She suddenly felt empty and, to distract herself, she began gathering the ingredients for dinner. Chris cleared a space on the counter for him to sit on and the conversation changed to more neutral matters; who was dating who, his latest exploits with Kayla, a new project he was hoping to line up. She listened to him as she prepared dinner, slowly realising that she felt more relaxed than she had in weeks.  
Once they were a couple of beers down and the chicken parmesan was finishing off in the oven while the pasta cooked, Chris went to use the bathroom while Harvey made herself comfortable on the couch. He returned with a huge grin on his face. “You left a not-so-little something on the counter in the bathroom.”  
She looked at him blankly for a moment before realising what he meant, then grimaced. “Damn, sorry. I forgot to put it away.”  
He shrugged, going to the kitchen for another beer before settling in the armchair, feet up on the coffee table. “It’s not as if I haven’t seen one before.”  
“Yes, but you haven’t seen mine.”  
“And now I have.” He winked, twisting the cap off his beer. “You know, if you’ve got an itch that needs scratching, I can help you with that.”  
She looked at him blankly, not sure if she’d understood him. “What?”  
“Come on, Harvey. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it at least once in the years we’ve known each other.”  
Although she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t, she felt more comfortable not admitting it to him. Heat rose up her neck. “Have you?!”  
“Yeah,” he said easily, as if she’d just asked him if he wanted a beer. “I’ve thought about it a whole bunch of times.”  
Harvey opened her mouth but no sound came out. Her throat felt tight as she forced herself to breathe. “We don’t feel that way about each other, Chris.”  
“No, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think about what it would be like to go to bed with you.”  
“Moving on,” she said firmly, glaring at him. She held up two DVDs. “_Corpse Bride_ or _Fantastic Four_?”  
He glared back. “_Corpse Bride_.”  
She threw him the case. “You cue it up while I dish up dinner.”  
All through dinner Harvey made small talk but all she could think about was what Chris had said. He’d never given any indication that he found her remotely attractive. They’d never even drunk kissed. Of course she was curious about what it would be like to have sex with him, he was an attractive guy and she’d always wondered what it was he had that made women so crazy.  
While his love life was a complicated tangle of knots, her own was typically barren, even at the best of times. She worked too hard for long hours to ever meet anyone and when she did meet someone, she never had time to go on dates. Being sequestered in Bakersfield was just another nail in that particular coffin. Although she was adept at seeing to her own needs, she longed for human contact; for skin on skin and the touch of another person. Although the thought of that person being Chris seemed icky at first, her body was definitely telling her it was interested.   
Once they’d eaten and cleared the plates away, Chris cut them both a slice of cake and he moved onto the couch beside her. Harvey would usually curl up against him but she sat stiff and frozen at the end of the couch, pushing her cake around her plate. For the first time in her life, she felt uncomfortable beside him.  
After a while, even he picked up on the atmosphere. “Harvey, what’s up?”  
“Nothing,” she said, far too quickly.  
He narrowed his eyes. “Usually by now, you’re lying on me with your hair in my face.”  
“It’s too hot.”  
“Or,” he continued to look at her through narrowed eyes, “you’re pissed with me because I told you I want to take you to bed.”  
She stood up, snatching up his empty plate and going to the kitchen where she scraped her own plate somewhat savagely into the bin. She banged them down on the counter with such ferocity she was surprised they didn’t break in her hands. “I’m not pissed with you.”  
“Are you sure? You’re definitely coming across as pissed.”  
She pushed her hands through her hair. “I’m not. I just… I never imagined you’d say something like that to me.”  
“Did you want me to?” he asked, getting to his feet and taking a few steps toward the kitchen, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans.  
Damn his shrewdness. “I don’t know. Maybe.” The words surprised her. These were the thoughts she didn’t let herself think. The feelings she pushed down and tried to deny. “I’m so confused right now.”  
“It’s just sex, Harvey. It doesn’t have to mean anything, it can just be something fun and, hopefully, mutually fulfilling that we share.”  
He advanced a little closer and she took a step back. Her knees felt like Jell-O. “It’ll be awkward and so weird.”  
“It won’t be weird.”  
“You’re like my brother.”  
“But I’m not your brother.”  
Something that sounded suspiciously like a whimper escaped her throat and she clapped her hand over her mouth. He was only a few feet away from her now. She took another step back and felt the counter dig into the small of her back. Chris stood in front of her, looking down at her with an expression she’d never seen before and gave her feelings that were definitely unsisterly. “This is crazy.”  
“Do you want me to stop?” There was a gleam of triumph in his eye. He knew her too well.  
She slowly shook her head. “Someone has to teach you how to put a condom on. I guess it should be me.”  
He chuckled softly then bent his head and kissed her. Harvey closed her eyes, trying to quell the internal monologue demanding to know what the hell she was doing, trying to concentrate just on his kiss and how it felt. He was right, it wasn’t weird. It was nice. Good, even. She kissed him back. Encouraged, his arms circled her waist and pulled her against him while she tentatively placed her hands on his shoulders. When they broke apart, he smiled, the fingers of one hand tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Is this okay?”  
She smiled weakly, feeling a little breathless. “More than I thought it would be.”  
  
“Well! This isn’t awkward at all.”  
Harvey rolled over to look at him. “That’s what someone who found it awkward would say!”  
He grinned at her, flashing his teeth. “I’m kidding. Well, I’m not, because it’s not awkward.”  
“I had fun,” she said softly. She had found it incredibly easy to relax with him and they’d spent a long time talking about what they liked while they explored this new aspect of their friendship. The end result had definitely been mutually fulfilling.  
“Me too. We should do this again.”  
“Don’t you need twenty to forty minutes to recover?”  
He laughed. “We both have itches we need to scratch.”  
“I think any itch you have needs to be checked out by a doctor.”  
“I will put you over my knee.”  
She bit her lip. “Maybe next time.”  
He looked at her for a moment, assessing her seriousness. “Remember you said that.”  
A thrill of arousal raced down her spine and she closed her eyes for a second to enjoy its journey. “You want us to be friends with benefits?”  
“Why not? It’s another layer to our relationship. I trust you and you know you can trust me. We find each other attractive. And just think how much you’ll save on batteries.”  
“You’re hilarious,” she said drily. She felt closer to him than ever and it was easy, in that moment, to think that they were in control, that sex wouldn’t change their perceptions of each other or the parameters of their relationship. “I don’t want to risk our friendship, Chris. You mean far too much to me.”  
He draped his arm across her waist and pulled her closer. “I’d never risk our friendship. You’re going to be the mother of my child and I’m going to take care of you always.”  
  
  
The cab drive from the airport to Harvey’s house took a lot longer than usual. The late afternoon Boston traffic was heavy and slow-moving due in part to the snowfall but also the Christmas Eve exodus of people migrating for the holidays. After six months in the sun, walking out of the airport and feeling the cold wind on her face had been exhilarating. More than anything she wanted to get home where she knew Chris was anxiously awaiting their arrival.  
“Wow,” Harvey laughed, looking up at her house. Chris had said he had everything ready for their arrival but she hadn’t realised he’d put up the Christmas lights on her eaves, or decorate the tree that twinkled prettily through the front window. His car wasn’t on the drive though, which was odd. He’d been pacing holes in the floor waiting for them to get home.  
She paid the driver and climbed out, first taking her bag from the trunk, then returning to take the car seat. She had sent most of her things on ahead, so all she’d had to bring from California were a few clothes and the things the baby needed. The thought of flying cross country with a newborn had been terrifying for her but it had all gone more smoothly than she could have hoped. Now they were home.  
“Chris?” She called, but the house was silent. As she passed the sitting room, she saw he’d put presents under the tree. She went through to the kitchen and put the car seat on the counter, carefully unclipping the harness and taking the baby out of her snowsuit before picking her up.  
The kitchen had been fully equipped with all the baby paraphernalia she could possibly need. She was sure the new nursery would be a hundred times worse. She looked around at the electric steriliser and the bottle warmer and smiled to herself. For the last couple of days, she’d been warming bottles in a jug of hot water.  
Harvey held the baby, who didn’t yet have a name, to her chest, marvelling at how quickly she’d grown used to the comforting weight in her arms. She’d changed the baby’s diaper and put her in a clean outfit at the airport, all ready to meet her dad. She was stunned he wasn’t there.   
She’d just made her way into the sitting room when she heard a car on the drive and headlights lit up the room for a moment. “Here he is,” she whispered. She realised that she was nervous, a dark feeling pressed into her stomach and made her feel a little queasy.  
The door opened and Chris almost tripped into the hallway.  
“Hey.”  
He whirled around to look at her and stopped, his eyes on the tiny bundle in her arms. “You’re back. I’m sorry I wasn’t here, I just realised that I didn’t get wipes and –”  
“It’s okay.” Harvey smiled, “Come and meet your daughter.”  
“Oh my god,” he gazed down at her. “She’s so beautiful.”  
“Yes, she is.” Tears threatened to overwhelm her and she took a deep breath, pushing them down.  
She sat on the couch and he sat beside her, his eyes on his daughter as she passed her into his arms. She could see he was utterly entranced as the baby looked up at him with big, blue eyes. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered. “I’ve spent the last few months trying to prepare myself for this moment, but I’m not prepared.”  
“I thought the same the first time I saw her.” She realised he was on the verge of tears. Although she knew he would feel no shame crying in front of her, she gave him and his daughter a moment. “She’s due a bottle. Let me go and warm it up for you.”  
In the kitchen, she plugged in the warmer and retrieved a bottle of formula milk from the changing bag. While she waited for it to heat, she leaned on the sink, staring out of the window into the dark garden. Moonlight reflected off the snow that lay in an even blanket over her lawn and hid her flowerbeds. Her mind wandered, going over the past few months and thinking of the next few, and the years that would follow.  
“Are you okay?” Chris stood in the kitchen door with the baby tucked safely against his chest.  
“Fine!” she said automatically, too brightly. “Her bottle should be ready now. Do you want to feed her?”  
“Harvey,” he cradled the baby with his left arm and reached out for her with his right. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay now.”  
Her eyes brimmed with tears and she knew there would be no holding them back. Chris gathered her against him and let her cry the past few months out. She’d been holding it together for so long and now, finally, the baby had arrived, they were back home in Massachusetts and she could let go of the fear and anxiety she’d been pushing down. He held her, shushing her quietly and kissing the top of her head.   
“Come on,” he said after a while. He put the baby back into her arms, picked up the bottle and led them into the sitting room. He sat sideways against the arm of the couch, pulling her down between his legs and then wrapping his arms around them both. “You’re my girls, Harvey. No matter what, I’m always going to keep you both safe.”  
“I know.” Sitting there in his arms it was much easier to believe it. All the things she had promised herself she’d discuss with him dimmed and vanished. She looked down at the baby. “Chris, she needs a name. I can’t keep calling her Muffin. She’ll grow up to be a stripper with daddy issues.”  
She felt rather than heard him chuckle, his chest pressed against her back. He settled his chin on her shoulder and stroked his daughter’s face with a gentle finger. “Belle.”  
“Belle.” Harvey smiled. “That’s perfect.”  
  
After Belle had finished her bottle and spit up on Chris’s top, they went upstairs to visit the nursery. As she’d expected, Chris had outdone himself. A Disney-style woodland mural adorned the walls and, though it was just trees and grass and flowers, she felt that at any moment, Pooh Bear might meander through the wood or Bambi stick his head out from behind a tree. Everything had a woodland theme and, just as she’d expected, plushies of almost every single Disney character she could think of sat on a high shelf that ran all the way around the room.  
“Oh, Chris,” she breathed, stepping inside and looking around. “It’s beautiful!”  
“I hope I’ve got everything you need.”  
“And then some,” she said, eyeing what looked like a breast pump sitting near the changing table. Her heart melted. “Thank you.”  
He shrugged. “It’s the least I can do.”  
Harvey yawned and checked her watch. “It’s time for her bath. Do you want to do it?”  
He nodded. “Just tell me what to do.”  
“I’m guessing you bought a baby bath?”  
“In the bathroom.”  
Harvey showed him how much to fill it and how to test the temperature with his elbow. She watched as he laid Belle on a changing mat and carefully took her clothes and diaper off before dunking her into the bath. She left him to it and went back to the nursery to lay out a sleepsuit and check out the crib. It seemed Chris had thought of everything. The sheets and blankets had been laundered and were tucked into the foot of the crib. There was one fat, fluffy bunny toy propped up in the corner and Harvey smiled fondly.  
She sat down in the rocking chair and closed her eyes, listening to Chris’s tentative first conversation with his little girl. It had been worth it. All the stress, all the worry, all the fear. Belle and Chris were together, and that was all that mattered. She closed her eyes for just a moment and when she opened them again, Chris was crouching in front of her, gently shaking her awake.  
“She’s asleep,” he whispered, indicating the crib. “Let’s go to your room.”  
Harvey stumbled sleepily after him as they crossed the hallway to her room. She curled up on the bed while he turned on the baby monitor that sat on her nightstand. “Can I have a cuddle?”  
“You don’t have to ask,” he said, laying down beside her and drawing her into his arms. “Are you okay?”  
She nodded. “I will be, now we’re home. I’ve had so much on my mind.”  
“I can’t even begin to imagine.” They lay in silence for a while, lost in their own thoughts, and then Chris asked, “Are you still tired?”  
“No. I’m really hungry.”  
“Good, because I made dinner!”  
“You? Don’t you mean _Angelo’s_ made dinner and brought it over?”  
“No,” he said witheringly. “_I_ made dinner and brought it over. All we have to do is reheat it.”  
“In that case, I’m definitely not sleepy. This I have to see!”  
He’d made a passable baked ziti which they warmed up in the oven. Chris prepared a salad while Harvey sterilised and made up Belle’s bottles. After they ate, they watched TV and, while she curled up next to him and leaned on his shoulder, her thoughts were noisy, reminding her that there was a baby upstairs. To all intents and purposes, her baby. Faye was out of the picture and everything was down to her. Potty training, weaning, choosing schools, dentist appointments, music lessons, sports, dance classes, puberty, teens and beyond. It was all her responsibility. Tears, hot and plentiful, splashed from her eyes once more.   
“Oh, Harvs, what’s wrong?” Chris asked, moving so he could see her face. “Please talk to me.”  
She shook her head, trying to gain control of the hiccupping sobs. “It’s just so overwhelming,” she said eventually. “I’ve signed the papers and she’s my responsibility. I…there’s just so much I don’t know.”  
“It’s okay,” he soothed. “We’ll work it out together. I know I won’t always be here but I will always be on the end of a phone. Any time of day or night, you can call me and I will pick up. I swear. No matter what I’m doing, where I am, who I’m with. It’ll be your Evans hotline. And it can be for the most mundane reason, like… I don’t know… you broke a nail. I will listen and I’ll help you find a solution. In this case, a manicurist.” She laughed a little and he smiled. “I…I don’t know how to thank you for what you’ve done. I know it’s big and it’s scary but I promise, I’ve got you both. You’re my queen, Harvs. Nobody can dethrone you.”  
She laughed properly, reaching over to the coffee table for a tissue to dry her eyes. “You’re such a dork, Chris.”  
“Yes, but I’m your dork.”  
She rolled her eyes but the tears had stopped. “Aren’t you scared?”  
“Terrified. But I wouldn’t want to do this with anyone but you. I trust you. I know you’re going to be an amazing mom.”  
Harvey rested her head on his shoulder once again. “Promise me you won’t go off to LA and forget about her.”  
“How can I forget about her? I’ve thought about nothing and nobody else for the past nine months. I’ll do the best I can for her.”  
“From the shadows.”  
“For now,” he insisted. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw her. She’s so tiny and beautiful and I can’t believe I had anything to do with creating such a perfect creature. As soon as she opened her eyes and looked at me, she stole my heart.”  
“First your heart, and then your wallet.” They laughed together and Harvey relaxed. It would be okay. None of her fears would come to fruition. She wouldn’t let them.  
“We’ve only got a few hours until word gets out that you’re back and the neighbourhood comes knocking.”  
Harvey puffed out her cheeks and let out a fast breath. “My parents…”  
They both grimaced. “Have you got your story ready?”  
“Yeah. I’ve rehearsed it until I can recite it backwards.”  
Chris took her hand in his, raising her knuckles to his lips. “I love you.”  
She smiled, the familiar warm feeling settling over her like a blanket draped over her shoulders. “I love you, too.”  
They prepared to go up to bed, Harvey locking up while Chris put the leftovers away and loaded the dishwasher. Both of them looked in on Belle before they went to bed.  
“Will she wake up in the night?” Chris asked.  
“She might. She doesn’t always but with the travelling and the time difference, it’s probably thrown her out.”  
“What do I do if she wakes up?”  
“Give her a bottle, change her diaper and try to put her back down.”  
“Okay. I can do that.”  
“Put a towel over your shoulder so that if she spits up it doesn’t get on you.”  
“I bought these square things?”  
“Muslin squares?”  
“Yes!”  
“You can use those, that’s what they’re for.” Harvey’s voice was thick with sleep and she pulled off her clothes, not caring that he was standing a few feet away. “Are you sure you don’t mind getting up?”  
“Positive,” he said wryly, watching her climb into bed. “You just put your t-shirt on inside out and backwards”  
Harvey was asleep before her head even hit the pillow. She dreamed that was trying to tell a teenage Belle to do her chores but she would say, “You’re not my mom” over and over. She woke in a cold sweat to find Chris’s side of the bed empty. It was still dark and she groped on the nightstand for her phone. It was only three o’clock. She fell back on the pillows, wiping sweat from her forehead and trying to catch her breath.  
“Come on, little one,” Chris’s voice drifted out of the monitor, making her jump. “Finish your bottle so we can all go back to bed.” Harvey grinned in the darkness. “I’m going to tell you a secret but you have to promise me that you’ll forget I ever told you. Deal? Okay. Well, I’m your dad. I know it’s a big shock because I haven’t been around but things are complicated. Harvey, your mom, she saved us both. She’s going to do an amazing job of bringing you up and I’m going to help you both as much as I can but I can’t tell you that I’m your dad again. Not for a while anyway. I’m going to be your fun Uncle Chris and I’m going to look after you so your mom can have breaks, and let you eat loads of junk food, and take you on vacation to Disney. I need you to know how much I love you and how much I wish…”  
His voice trailed off and Harvey turned her face into the pillow to muffle her sobs. What had they done? How did either of them think that this was ever going to work out? She wished she’d listened when he told her it was crazy.  
She was still awake when Chris slid back into bed. She kept her eyes closed and her breathing even, not wanting him to know she’d been crying again. She stayed awake for the rest of the night, watching the cold light of dawn crawl through the crack in the curtains, heralding the first day of the rest of her life.


	2. Chapter 2

2018  
  
“Belle!” Harvey shouted for the fourth time. She picked up the snacks she had prepared and retrieved her daughter’s discarded backpack from the foot of the stairs. “Come on Belle-Belle! Chris will be here soon.”  
“I’m coming!” A faint voice yelled back.  
Harvey rolled her eyes, put the snacks in the backpack and headed into her study to retrieve Belle’s passport. She might not need it but sometimes airlines liked to check kids’ ages and she was very tall for her age. Once she’d tucked it into the front pocket, she went back into the kitchen, clearing away apple peels and putting the lid back on a jar of peanut butter.  
The sound of thunderous footsteps on the stairs almost drowned out the sound of the front door opening. She heard a loud squeal, a faint “oof” and the raucous, almost identical laughter of father and daughter. She rolled her eyes and hid a smile. A few years ago, he would have walked in holding Belle upside down by one ankle while her face went bright red and she laughed herself silly. Now she was far too big.  
“Good morning,” Chris said, strolling into the kitchen, closely followed by Belle, who made a beeline for the fridge.  
“Good morning.” Harvey took down two mugs and poured coffee from the pot. “How are you?”  
“Excited!” Chris took a seat at the breakfast bar. They were off on their annual pilgrimage to Disney World, although this time Harvey wouldn’t be joining them. “How are you?”  
“Envious.”  
“Have you seen my iPad?” Belle backed out of the fridge holding a slice of ham in one hand and a cheese slice in the other.  
“On the table. Do you want me to do your hair?”  
“Yes, please.” Belle sat up beside Chris, rolling both cheese and ham up and shoving them into her mouth.  
Harvey dug in the drawer for a hairbrush and a hairband. “You’re going to need Disney princess hair. Do you want a Cinderella, or a Princess Jasmine, or…?”  
“Elsa!”  
“Of course, Elsa. When you know how bad I am at French braids,” she muttered, spraying copious amounts of detangler before attempting to get the brush into her thick, curly hair.  
“Just leave it, she can go as Merida,” Chris said with a laugh.  
Belle poked her tongue out at him. Harvey caught his eye over her head and they smiled at each other. “Did you tell Chris about your tap exam?”  
“Nailed it.”  
“You did? What’s that now, grade three?”  
“Four!” Belle corrected him.  
“Four? Wow! That’s great, sweet pea. I’m really proud of you.” He held his hand up, signalling the beginning of their extensive and time-consuming handshake.  
Harvey tried to keep a grip on a strand of hair but it slipped out of her fingers. Exasperated, she turned to her coffee, pouring in half and half and adding sugar. As the long and complicated handshake came to an end, Belle’s sweater slipped from her shoulder, revealing a large, purple bruise. Harvey frowned, peering at it closely. “Honey? How did this happen?”  
Belle shrugged, unconcerned. “I don’t know. I think I bumped into the doorframe or something.”  
“You had those bruises on your legs, too. Belle, is there something you want to talk to us about? Is someone hurting you?”  
“No,” she said, in a tone that clearly meant ‘duh’.  
“You can tell us,” Chris said gently. “You won’t get into any trouble.”  
Belle tutted and turned to look at Harvey. “Mom, I swear. I must have just banged myself.”  
She looked into eyes almost the exact shade of blue as Chris’s, complete with his long, thick lashes. She wasn’t lying. She could never hold Harvey’s gaze if she wasn’t being truthful. “Okay, sweetheart, but be more careful.” She finished the braid and secured it with the band. “There you go. One Elsa.”  
“Thanks, Mom!” Belle slid off the stool and ran out of the room. Harvey watched her go, still with a troubled frown on her face.  
“Do you believe her?” Chris asked.  
She nodded, “Yeah. She looked me right in the eye.”  
“She does throw herself around a lot. Last time I picked her up from school she was doing backbends on the sidewalk.”  
“I’ve told her to stop. She treats the backyard like a gymnasium. It’s great that she’s so active but I’m really scared she’s going to get hurt.”  
Belle had always been a daredevil. Even before she could walk, she would climb anything that was climbable. She’d begged to go to gymnastics at the age of four. Then ballet, tap and contemporary dancing. Then the trampoline. Now cheerleading. The child never stopped moving. Harvey was exhausted just trying to keep up with her after school schedule.  
“I wish you were coming with us,” Chris said, bringing her out of her reverie.  
“Me too. I’d much rather be having my picture taken with Eeyore than working.”  
He stood up and took her by the waist, pulling her close to him. His lips brushed her neck and the soft bristles of his beard raised goosebumps as they tickled her skin. “You smell so good.”  
Reluctantly, she pulled away, looking at the door and saying, “Belle…” in a quiet voice.  
Chris cleared his throat and pushed his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders. “God forbid she should see her mom and dad kissing.”  
“But she doesn’t know that, does she?”  
Telling Belle his truth was a constant bone of contention between them. There had been a time, Belle would have been about three-years-old, that Chris had been prepared to tell his family. They had agreed on an evening to get their families together and confess what they had done. Then a call came from Marvel and Chris had accepted the role of possibly the most moral man ever written. It would have ruined him if the story had got out at that point. Harvey had understood because that was partly why she’d adopted Belle in the first place. After that, the spotlight grew a lot brighter. The interest in his personal life climbed to ridiculous proportions and Harvey found that she was subjected to the same scrutiny as any other woman in his life.  
To his credit, Chris had continued to be great and never pulled away from Belle, who loved him immensely. Harvey couldn’t fault him. They had agreed that she should at least know she was adopted. Shortly after her eighth birthday, Harvey had sat her down and explained a very pale version of the truth. It had been incredibly hard to lie to her even while trying to tell the truth, and Harvey doubted the story would hold water once Belle started to question it, but she’d taken it in her stride with remarkable maturity.  
Before Belle had been born, while she was in California, her main fear was that Chris would quickly decide that he could take care of the baby, or that his mother would find out and take her away. But weeks turned into months and months turned into years and Chris still hadn’t breathed a word to anyone.  
“Let’s not have this conversation now,” Chris said, a touch of petulance creeping into his tone.  
Harvey gave him a long look. “Sure. Let’s add it to the list of things we don’t talk about.”  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
She rubbed a hand over her forehead. “Nothing. I’m just feeling snippy, ignore me. I need to get ready for work.”  
They walked out into the hallway, finding Belle sitting on the stairs pulling on her shoes. “Have you got everything?” Chris asked her.  
“I think so.” She looked at Harvey inquiringly.  
“Your passport is in the pocket of your backpack, I made you some snacks for the journey, your phone, iPad and chargers are in there, and a change of clothes in case they lose your bags.”  
“Thanks, Mom,” Belle grinned, throwing her arms around Harvey’s waist. “I love you.”  
“I love you, too, muffin. Be good for Chris. Don’t let him spoil you.” She hugged her, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “Have a great time. Call me every night.”  
“We will!” Belle called back, already halfway out of the door and heading towards Chris’s car.  
He looked at her dolefully. “Don’t make me go away with you being mad at me. Please?”  
“I’m not mad at you,” she said wearily.  
“Let’s make a date for when I get back. Belle can stay over at Carly’s and we’ll talk.”  
“Okay.”  
He hesitated, then let the door close a little so they couldn’t be seen from outside. “Can I kiss you goodbye?”  
Harvey capitulated, nodding her head and stepping into his open arms. His kiss was so familiar to her now. She broke away first, making a thing of handing him Belle’s suitcase even though it was closer to him than her. “Don’t let her eat too much junk. Make sure she has a few early nights, too, she’s been falling asleep on the couch a lot after school.”  
“I love you, Harvs.”  
She looked him in the eye. “I love you, too.”  
Harvey stood at the door and waved as Chris backed out of the drive. Belle sat beside him in the passenger seat and she saw how alike the two of them were. She wondered how other people couldn’t see it, but she guessed they saw what they wanted to see. She’d lost count of how many times people had said Belle was the image of her.  
It was way past time to tell Belle the truth about her parentage and the circumstances under which she’d been adopted. She was almost twelve and incredibly bright. It wouldn’t be long before she’d pick up on the undercurrents of tension between Harvey and Chris. She deserved to know that she’d had a father since the day she was born, that she had blood family she visited with every week, that the kids she played with were really her cousins. Harvey knew they had screwed up. Twelve years was too long.  
She closed the door and took a breath. The house always seemed empty when Belle wasn’t around, playing her music in one room while she watched dance videos in another, leaving a trail of detritus from the fridge to wherever she was sitting. Harvey started gathering up discarded shoes and jackets, looking forward to spending the next two weeks in a clean and tidy house that always had milk in the fridge.  
  
Harvey woke with a start, looked at the clock in alarm and swiftly realised it was her day off. She rolled over, smiling to herself as she burrowed deeper under the quilt. It was incredibly rare for her to get to sleep in. Usually, when Belle was off at a friend’s or on trips, Chris would stay over. He relished the opportunity to have sex wherever the mood took them and to make as much noise as they wanted. She listened to the silence, dozing on and off, her mind blissfully blank for once.  
When her bladder wouldn’t let her stay in bed a moment longer, she got up and headed into the bathroom. She showered and dressed before heading downstairs to quell the rumbling in her stomach. She had plans to go shopping and buy Belle’s birthday and Christmas presents while she had the chance. Belle was getting to the age that was difficult to buy for. She no longer wanted toys, Chris supplied her with every gadget under the sun, and she had so many clothes that Harvey was always threatening to bag up everything that littered her bedroom floor and send them to goodwill.  
While she munched on a slice of toast, she scrolled through present ideas on her phone. Belle was obsessed with dance, so maybe tickets to the ballet in New York. They’d seen the Nutcracker a few times but Swan Lake might be fun. They could have a girly weekend, do some shopping, get their hair done, it would be fun. With her birthday only five days before Christmas, Harvey always made a point of separating the two, with none of that, “This is for your birthday and Christmas” nonsense that Christmas babies often got. Every year, she threw Belle a birthday party with a non-Christmas theme and made sure that people didn’t lump her birthday in with the holidays.  
Against her better judgement, she decided to drive into Boston and have a look around the stores for more present ideas. It wasn’t just Belle she had to buy for; she still needed to buy a gift for Chris, who was even harder to buy for now he was a huge movie star, and her mom and dad, who she liked to keep at ‘a donation has been made in your name’ level. With only three weeks before the holidays everywhere would be packed and parking would be a nightmare.  
She miraculously found a space in a garage close to Macy’s and started to walk towards the store. It had been sunny earlier but now thick dark clouds billowed in and it had started to rain. She pulled up the collar of her jacket and put her head down, hurrying along the street.  
“Harvey?”  
She looked up at the figure standing in front of her, blocking her way. A man who looked vaguely familiar smiled at her. “Hi?”  
“We met at the hoteliers' conference in March. Guy.”  
“Guy, of course! How are you? I didn’t think you lived in Boston?”  
“I didn’t until a couple of months ago. I’m the new general manager at the Four Seasons.”  
“You know, I heard about that and I thought your name sounded familiar. Congratulations! How are you liking Beantown?”  
“Just fine. Are you busy? May I buy you a coffee? We can get out of the rain and catch up.”  
Harvey faltered. It was just a coffee. There was absolutely no indication that he expected it to turn into something else or that he would ask her on a date. After twelve years of being Chris’s fuck buddy, she found that she felt an irrational loyalty towards him. It didn’t matter what he did or who he slept with, as soon as someone showed any kind of interest in her, she felt as if she was being unfaithful. Trying to ignore the feeling, she smiled up at Guy. “That would be nice.”  
He took her to a small coffee shop that was far enough away from the stores to be busy but not packed. There was a table free beside the window and they shrugged off their wet coats before sitting opposite each other. “What brings you out in this weather anyway?” Guy asked once the waitress had taken their orders and disappeared behind the counter.  
“It’s my daughter’s birthday soon and she’s away on vacation, so I’m taking the opportunity to buy and hide her present while she’s gone.”  
“You have a daughter? How old is she?”  
“She’ll be twelve this birthday.”  
His eyes widened and she knew what was coming. “You’ve got a twelve-year-old? You can’t have been much older than that when you had her.”  
She shook her head, smiling. “I was twenty-five when she came along.”  
“Are you still with her dad?”  
Harvey held in a deep sigh. There was no way to answer the question truthfully. “No.”  
Guy smiled and her heart sank. He was interested. To compound that realisation, he said, “Can I take you out for dinner one night?”  
The waitress returned with their coffees and Harvey took the opportunity to play for time, busying herself with spooning sugar into her cup. She hated that he first thought was Chris, and how he would react. Her second thought was Belle and the web of lies that connected them all. Guy was looking at her expectantly, waiting for her answer. “Sure.”  
He visibly relaxed. “Great! Are you free on Friday? I have the day off and there’s a great new Argentinian place opened up on Tremont Street.”  
“I’m working on Friday but I finish at eight, if that’s not too late for you?”  
“It’s perfect.”  
They arranged to meet at a nearby bar after her shift and Harvey sipped her coffee, trying to quell the nerves that clawed at her stomach. To cover herself, she asked him a question that would keep him talking for a while. “How’s life at the Four Seasons?”  
Work talk lasted until their cups were empty and Harvey surreptitiously glanced at her watch. She was getting hungry and wanted to get the birthday and Christmas shopping over and done with. Guy saw her checking the time. “Do you need to get back for your daughter?”  
“No, she’s on vacation with her –” she caught herself before she said ‘dad’, “my friend. He’s like an uncle to her and they’re very close. They’re at Disney World with his family. Usually we all go but I couldn’t get away from work this year.”  
“Ah, is that because of the big wedding you’ve got coming up?”  
“You know about that?” she said, her voice high with surprise. It was supposed to be a big secret. Chris wasn’t the only celebrity in Boston, and one of the others had chosen her hotel for their wedding and reception.  
“Everyone knows about it! It’s the talk of the town, at least in the hotels. Are you very involved?”  
She nodded, dropping her gaze to her empty cup and picking at the foam that hard hardened around the rim. “Very. I’m the main coordinator, which is why I’m sat here instead of on the _It’s a Small World_ ride.”  
He grimaced, “I’m not sure which is worse.”  
“You’d think it would the ride but it’s actually the wedding. I’ll be glad when it’s over.”  
“Tell me something,” he leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. She looked up at him. He had lovely brown eyes and dark hair styled in a soft quiff. She hadn’t realised quite how handsome he was. “Why are you still a shift manager?”  
“That is a long story. I was on track for a general manager position. I was about to go back to Harvard and do my MBA but then Belle, my daughter, came along and I shelved my plans. I took four years off to look after her and by the time I was ready to go back to work, I had to start over.”  
“Do you have your MBA now?”  
She raised an eyebrow. The conversation was making her uncomfortable. “Still putting it off. Look, this has been nice but I really need to get going.”  
He hurriedly stood up as she pushed her chair back and held her coat while she put it on. After they exchanged numbers and Guy went to pay the bill, Harvey replied to a text message she’d missed. They walked back out into the rain together, simultaneously ducking their heads. “Which way are you going?” he asked as they fell into step beside each other.  
“I’m going to Macy’s.”  
“Then I’ll leave you here and very much look forward to seeing you on Friday.”  
Harvey smiled up at him. “I’m glad I ran into you.”  
“Me too.” He bent his head and kissed her cheek. She caught a waft of unfamiliar cologne, subtle and expensive. “Take care, Harvey.”  
She watched him go for a moment, then turned on her heel and pushed her hands into her pockets. She would have dinner with him on Friday but she knew that nothing would come of it. Chris would never allow it. Not the real Chris, who didn’t notice that she didn’t really date and never seemed to be in a relationship, but the Chris who lived in her head. The one who watched over their secrets and reminded her of the lies that tripped so easily from her tongue now. There were only so many ways she could phrase things to mask the truth.  
More than anything, she longed for someone she could be honest with. There wasn’t a single person she could tell the truth to, about Belle, about Chris, about the thoughts in her head. She felt so isolated. This wasn’t one of the many bases they had covered twelve years ago. It was okay for Chris, he didn’t live with Belle, he didn’t have to talk about her or explain her presence. They were his secret, tucked away at home, not interfering with his life at all. He flitted between Massachusetts and LA, going to parties, dating, carrying on without a care in the world. As the years ticked by, Harvey had grown resentful.  
It wasn’t that she didn’t have a support network. Her parents, surprisingly, had taken to Belle in a way she hadn’t expected. Her mom often babysat while Harvey worked late or on the rare occasions she went out. They were still distant and not very affectionate but there was a warmth there that maybe she and her sister hadn’t seen for a while. Chris’s family doted on Belle, which only served to make Harvey feel even more wretched. As much as Belle deserved to know that these people were her blood family, they deserved to know Belle, too.  
To Harvey’s constant surprise, Lisa, who didn’t usually miss a trick, didn’t see the Evans in Belle. She had Chris’s eyes and his freckles. She had his spare top lip and a full bottom lip that made her look as if she was constantly pouting. She had Faye’s hair and colouring, but Chris’s height and broad shoulders. Not to mention the sheer amount that Chris had done and continued to do for her. While he was at home, they were rarely apart. When she’d had Belle christened, it made sense to make him her godfather. It would be expected because he and Harvey were so close but it would also give them some cover for the time he spent with Belle.  
It was Harvey who had realised the flaw in their plan. If she got into a serious relationship, if someone came along who wanted to share his life with her and Belle, how would Chris continue to enjoy unlimited access to his daughter without raising both eyebrows and questions? So, Harvey stayed alone and lonely, carrying the weight of everything on her shoulders while Chris went about his life, completely oblivious.  
Harvey looked up to find herself in the children’s department of Macy’s. Her vision was blurred with tears and she hastily wiped them away, taking a practised breath to dispel them. Christmas always made her gloomy and she was under a lot of stress at work. It was hardly surprising she felt emotional. She gave her head a little shake and reached into her bag for her shopping list. She was just being silly, caught in her head for a moment. Everything would be fine.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've done so much research for this story but I am not a doctor. I hope anyone out there who knows what's supposed to be going on from this point on can forgive me for any glaring errors.  
@Aleja21 I'm looking at you!

The phone woke Harvey from a deep sleep. She emerged from under the covers and squinted at the time. It was barely four o’clock. She turned the phone over to see Chris’s name flashing on the screen and just like that she was filled with foreboding. “What’s wrong?”  
He paused for a second. “Belle’s in the hospital.”  
“What?! What happened? Is she hurt?” She pushed the quilt off and got up, standing uselessly in the middle of the room.  
“She’s not hurt but she’s sick. She got a new bruise and she’d been really tired. I took her to the doctor just to make sure she was okay and he sent her straight to the hospital. They won’t tell me anything.”  
“Are they keeping her in?”  
“I don’t know. You need to call them and you need to get down here. There’s a flight at six, can you get to the airport in time?”  
Harvey wanted to vomit. She sat back down on the bed. “Yeah,” she said faintly, “I’ll make it.”  
“I’ll send a car to pick you up at the airport and bring you straight here.”  
She reached across to the nightstand and found a pen and a piece of paper. “Give me the details. I’ll call them now.”  
He reeled off a phone number and the name of the doctor. “I’ll take care of your ticket. Just get to the airport.”  
When she hung up, it took her several tries to put the number in correctly. Her hands were trembling both from the shock of being woken up and being told her daughter was in the hospital. She had to hold for almost ten minutes before they tracked the doctor down. Once she’d answered some questions about her identity, she asked, “What’s wrong with Belle? It’s not just a fever, is it?”  
“I don’t know yet,” he sighed. “There is, I’m afraid, some cause for concern. Your friend tells me she’s been fatigued and has unexplained bruising. Her blood work came back with a few abnormalities.”  
“Abnormalities?”   
“All of her blood cells are very low. She’s severely anaemic. I’m particularly concerned about her platelets level. Has she been bleeding recently?”  
“No, just the bruising.”  
“At this stage, there is no knowing why and finding out might be a lengthy process, so I suggest you take her home for more tests. There are some things we can do to make Belle more comfortable so she can travel. I understand you’re in Massachusetts. Are you far from Boston?”  
“No more than forty minutes away.”  
“I have a friend who works in the specialist centre at Boston Children’s Hospital. I can give her a call and let her know you’re coming.”  
“What will you do to make her comfortable?”  
“We’ll give her a blood transfusion. It’s a very temporary fix though. She might say she feels better but she won’t be. It’ll be like putting a band-aid on a severed limb.”  
Tears filled Harvey’s eyes. “What do you think is wrong with her? I know you can’t give me a diagnosis but give me an idea, please?”  
“I can’t. It would be irresponsible of me at this stage. I’ll arrange for the transfusion and, barring any ill effects, I’ll discharge her later today for you to take her home.”  
Harvey wiped tears from her eyes. “Chris can make any decisions that need to be made while I’m on my way down there. You can tell him everything.”  
She hung up and went straight into the bathroom, pulling a brush through her hair and cleaning her teeth, before running downstairs to retrieve her passport. She’d left her phone upstairs so she went back up to get it and realised she hadn’t dressed. Her hands shook violently as she pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and grabbed a hoodie to tide her over from the Boston winter to the Orlando sunshine.  
She called a cab to take her to the airport and sat on the stairs in the dark, waiting for it to arrive. The last couple of nights she hadn’t been able to speak to Belle because she’d been asleep before her bedtime and she’d just put it down to walking around the parks all day. But she’d been falling asleep when she got home from school, often going to bed before dinner. Harvey scowled, pressing her fingers into her forehead.  
When she arrived at the airport, Chris had arranged her ticket and, somehow, for her to be rushed through the airport and escorted onto the plane. He kept her updated with text messages but nothing put her mind at rest. The three-hour flight seemed to last for days and Harvey just stared out of the window and tried to hold back tears of fear and frustration. When they eventually touched down in Orlando, she was the first off of the plane and ran through the airport to emerge into the arrivals hall where a chauffeur stood holding up a card with her name on.  
Chris waited for her at the entrance to the hospital, the peak of his baseball cap pulled low over his sunglasses. He held the door open while she climbed out. “Are you okay? Where’s your bag?”  
“I forgot to pack one.”  
“Well, that answers both questions.” He put an arm around her and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Come on, she’s waiting for you.”  
“Tell me what happened.”  
“She’s been tired since we got here but when we were at Animal Kingdom, she was lagging behind and out of breath all the time. I told her twice I’d take her back to the hotel if she didn’t feel well but she kept insisting she was fine. She fell asleep on the safari tour so I took her back to see the doctor.”  
Harvey pushed her hands into her hair, feeling completely helpless. “I should have known.”  
“How could you possibly have known?”  
“The tiredness, the bruises, I –”  
“No, Harvey.” His voice was quiet but firm. “Stop it.”  
She chewed her lip miserably, barely in control of her emotions. “It’s time, Chris. This is a wakeup call for both of us.”  
He nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”  
“We’ll tell Belle when we get home. Then we’ll tell everyone else.”  
“I almost told Scott. He was here with us all night and I wanted to tell him everything.”  
Harvey stopped, turning to look at him. “Really?”  
“Yeah,” he said wearily, running a hand over his beard. She realised that he had been up all night, since the previous morning, probably. “I know that’s why you’ve been angry recently.”  
“It’s not. I… Chris, it’s a lot of things, none of which we can talk about right now.”  
He gave her a long look but said nothing. They arrived straight into the ER, bypassing the waiting area and reception. He gestured to a side room. “She’s in there.”  
He opened the door and Harvey was met with the sight of her little girl sitting on a bed, looking happy and healthy, and nothing like the pale, bruised wretch that Harvey had been imagining. “Hello, muffin.”  
“Mommy!” Belle said happily, getting up on her knees to wrap her arms around Harvey’s neck.  
Harvey hugged her as tightly as she dared, smoothing back her hair and pulling back to look at her face. “How are you feeling?”  
“I’m better now. I had a blood transfusion!”  
“So I’ve heard. I take it all went well?”  
Chris nodded. “She did go the colour of a tomato though.”  
“We agreed it was a strawberry,” Belle argued. “And the doctor said I can go home later. Uncle Chris, can we go to Fantasmic! tonight?”  
Harvey and Chris exchanged glances. “Sweetheart, I’m here to take you home. The doctor said you need more tests and it might take some time, so it’s better to go to a hospital in Boston. He gave you the blood so you’d feel well enough to travel back.”  
“I want to stay!” Belle insisted, her big blue eyes filling with tears. “You said we could go to Fantasmic! this year because you were sick last time.”  
“Sweet pea, I’ll bring you back as soon as you’re better. I promise.” Chris put his hand on his heart. “But we’ve got to take you home.”  
Belle turned her back on both of them, curling up beneath the thin hospital blanket. Harvey raised her eyes to the ceiling then sat down on the chair beside the bed. “Did the doctor say when he’ll discharge her?”  
“No, but he said to let him know when you arrived so I’ll go and find him.”  
Once the door had closed behind Chris, Harvey leaned on the edge of the bed and gently rubbed Belle’s back. “Muffin, I know you’re disappointed that we have to cut this vacation short but there will be others.”  
Belle turned over to look at Harvey. “I looked up my symptoms on my phone.”  
She frowned disapprovingly. “We both know you can’t rely on Doctor Google.”  
“It says leukemia. That’s cancer.”  
Harvey’s blood ran cold. She didn’t know what to say. Until it was ruled out, she couldn’t say no or tell her not to be silly. “Belle, there are lots of things it could be. That’s why the most important thing to do right now is to go home so you can have the tests done.”  
“Will I have to stay at the hospital?”  
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Harvey stroked her hair. “Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t feeling well?”  
She shrugged. “I guess I thought I’d feel better soon.”  
“You were worried I wouldn’t let you come on vacation?”  
“A bit.”  
The door opened and they both looked up as Chris and a doctor walked in. His face lit up when he saw Belle. “Is that really my patient? You look so different from when I first saw you!”  
She giggled and the sound lifted a weight from Harvey’s shoulders. “It’s really me!”   
He picked up the clipboard at the end of the bed and flicked through the last few pages. “You’re doing much better. And you didn’t have a reaction to the blood transfusion which is great! I think I can probably let you out if you promise me you’re going to avoid crowds, avoid people who are sick and go straight to the hospital when you get home. Can you do that?”  
Belle nodded solemnly. “Yes.”  
“Awesome. I’m just going to talk to your mom outside for a second and we’ll sort out your paperwork. Ms Brooks?” He gestured towards the door.  
Harvey cast a glance at Chris. “Are you coming?”  
“I’ll keep Belle company for a minute.”  
She followed the doctor outside and into an empty cubicle where he perched on the end of the bed. “I’ll be honest, her test results are terrible. She is severely anaemic and she’s going to need more transfusions, even before you get a diagnosis. She’s probably going to need platelets, too. Even if she’s not bleeding now, any tiny cut or a nosebleed could cause problems. I’ve made you a copy of everything we’ve done and the results. If you go to the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Centre and ask to speak to Melanie Jones, she’ll be there all day tomorrow and she’s expecting you. I have to warn you, it’s the centre for blood disorders but also oncology. I don’t want you to see that and panic when you get there.”  
Harvey slumped. “Belle already thinks she has leukemia so that’s going to be hard to explain.”  
“The internet is a blessing and a curse.”  
He didn’t rule it out or tell her not to be silly. “Can we take her home now?”  
“Just give me ten minutes to sort out the discharge paperwork,” he said with a nod, getting up and walking out.  
Harvey took a deep breath and then another and another. When she was sure she had control of herself, she walked back towards the side room. Chris had taken her seat and leant on the bed, a magazine in his hands as he read out the questions to a quiz.  
“Everything okay?” he asked, glancing up as she walked in.  
“Yeah. What’s the quiz?”  
“Does Your Crush Like You Back?” Chris read in a breathy SoCal accent.  
“Oh my god,” she muttered, sitting on the end of the bed. “Who’s taking it, you or Belle?”  
“Belle,” he said, turning his head to raise an eyebrow at her.  
She raised her eyebrow back at him, making him laugh and look away, returning his attention to the magazine. She listened to them talking and laughing but not really taking in anything they were saying. Her thoughts were loud and chaotic as she worried about what could be wrong with Belle. leukemia echoed around and around her head to the point that she pulled out her phone to Google it herself. Before she could even open the app, the doctor returned.  
Once they’d signed the papers and he’d talked them through things to look out for, they went outside the main entrance to wait for the Uber. Belle walked beside Chris, her hand in his as Harvey walked a few steps behind, watching them.  
She wondered how Belle would react to finally finding out that her beloved Uncle Chris was actually her dad. Harvey hoped that she would be able to remember all of the things he’d done for her, all of the times he’d been there for her. He’d been the best dad he could be under the circumstances. She hoped Belle would understand everything, their reasons and their continued duplicity. When she’d been younger, she had been so proud and would tell anyone who would listen that Captain America was her uncle.  
Once they arrived at the hotel, everyone else was still out at the parks which Harvey was thankful for. Chris had booked a jet to take them home, rather than take Belle through an international airport and onto a commercial aeroplane. Chris and Belle both went to shower and change while Harvey gathered up Belle’s things and started to pack her bag.  
“Mom, look.” Belle came out of the bathroom and showed Harvey her arm. Another purple bruise ran along her upper arm, almost from elbow to shoulder.  
Harvey sighed. “Come here, sweetheart.”  
“Have I got cancer?” A fat tear rolled down her cheek as she crossed the room to Harvey.  
She wrapped her arms tightly around Belle, not caring that she was wet from the shower. “I don’t know if you do or you don’t, but we’re going to find out. You’re a strong, beautiful girl and whatever it is, you’re going to get through it.”  
“I don’t want to lose my hair,” she sobbed.  
Harvey couldn’t speak. She didn’t want to cry in front of Belle but her throat burned and felt so tight she could hardly breathe. All she could do was hold her and concentrate on pushing her own tears away. After a while, she rubbed Belle’s shoulders. “I left an outfit out for you. You get dressed while I go and talk to Chris, order yourself some food and make sure I packed all your stuff.”  
Belle sniffled a little and wiped her eyes on the edge of her towel. “Are we going to the hospital as soon as we get back to Boston?”  
“No, we’ll go tomorrow. I think you and Chris need a good night’s sleep.”  
“How long will it take to find out what’s wrong with me?”  
“I don’t know. Hopefully not too long. We’ll find out more when we go to the clinic. And about that, we have to go to a special centre at the children’s hospital. They deal with blood disorders but also cancer. I don’t want you to think that just because we have to go there, that’s what’s wrong with you.”  
“I’m scared,” she said in a tiny voice that drove into Harvey’s heart like a shard of glass.  
“It’s okay to be scared but you mustn’t worry.” She kissed her. “Make sure to brush your hair out so it doesn’t get tangled.”  
Harvey went to Chris’s room and knocked. “Are you decent?”  
“Does it matter?”  
She half-smiled and walked in to find him sitting on the bed with a towel slung around his waist. “Belle thinks she’s got leukemia.”  
Chris looked up at her but there was a distance in his gaze, telling her he was lost in thought. “So do I.”  
“Chris!”  
“I’m sorry, but I do. I’ve seen this so many times when I’ve visited sick kids. Their parents tell me it started with fatigue and bruising and shortness of breath.”  
She sat down beside him, staring down at her feet. “It could be something else.”  
“Like what?” he snapped.  
Harvey pulled back, looking at him in shock. “I don’t know, I’m not a psychic doctor. But there must be other things it could be or the doctor would have told me that yes, it’s leukemia!”  
His face softened and he held his arm out for her. She looked at him belligerently before finally leaning into him and letting him wrap his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Harvey. I just keep thinking about all the kids I’ve visited. I never imagined that it could happen to Belle. She’s so full of energy and life.”  
“All kids are until it happens to them.” Reluctantly, she put her arms around him and drew comfort from his presence. “What time is our flight?”  
“Anytime we want, there’s a plane ready and a pilot on standby. I just have to make a call.”  
“That sounds both cheap and environmentally friendly.”  
“I don’t mind killing a few trees if it means my daughter gets to live. What did the doctor say to you anyway?”  
“That her blood test results were terrible and she’ll need more transfusions, even while they’re still running diagnostic tests.”  
“No clues as to what’s wrong with her?”  
“Nothing. I mentioned leukemia and he didn’t rule it out. The clinic we’re going to –”  
“Dana-Farber?”  
“Yes.”  
“I know it. It’s one of the top specialist cancer centres in the country or something.”  
What would she do if Belle had cancer? How would they possibly get through it? Harvey bit her lip until she tasted blood. She wouldn’t let herself cry. She had to be strong for Chris and Belle, even if she felt like the finest, most delicately blown glass bubble that the slightest breath of wind would shatter into a million pieces.   
  



	4. Chapter 4

It was late when they landed in Boston. Chris had left his family behind to enjoy the rest of their vacation and flown home with Harvey and Belle. They were all exhausted as they disembarked and climbed into the back of a waiting car that whisked them out of the city.  
“Are you going home, or…?” Harvey asked.  
Chris shook his head. “Can I stay with you?”  
She nodded, turning her head to look out of the window. A feeling of constant nausea had settled in her stomach and every time she looked at Belle, it seemed to swell to encompass her whole body. Harvey didn’t really have faith. Her parents never went to church when she was younger. Spiritually she was adrift. She found herself wishing that she had a god to believe in, to pray to, to bargain with for the health of her daughter.  
When they arrived at her house, Chris dealt with the luggage while Harvey took Belle upstairs and put her to bed. Usually, she’d argue for just another half an hour to text her friends or watch videos on YouTube but she was asleep before Harvey even turned out the light. When she went downstairs, Chris was in the kitchen, rummaging in the fridge.  
“Have you got any beer?”  
“If there’s none in there then there’s some in the garage.”  
He wrinkled his nose. “Whisky?”  
“In the drinks cabinet.” She followed him through to the living room and sat heavily on the couch, resting her tired head on the cushions.  
Chris sat beside her and handed her a glass. They sipped in silence for a minute. “I’ve been thinking about the best way to tell Belle.”  
Harvey closed her eyes. “How do you want to do it?”  
He leaned forward, rubbing his hands over his face. “I don’t know. Harvey, I want to say sorry. You’re right and you’ve always been right. We should have told her years ago.”  
She nodded, acknowledging the apology. “I know.”  
“I’m worried how she’s going to react.”  
“I wish I could tell you everything will be fine but I just don’t know which way she’s going to go. What I am sure of though is, however she reacts, she will come around in the end. She loves you like a father already, even if she doesn’t realise it.”  
Chris turned to look at her. “Do you really think that?”  
“Yes, of course.”  
He sighed, dashing his hands through his hair. “I hope you’re right.”  
“If she takes it badly it just means she needs time to process it. It’s a big truth, Chris, and no matter how mature she is, she’s still only a child.”  
“Will you be there when I tell her?”  
“If that’s what you want.”  
He swallowed nervously and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “I’m scared.”  
Belle’s pale little face flashed in her mind for a second. With a sigh, she turned towards him and took his face in her hands, forcing his eyes up to hers. “She might react like she did when I told her she’s adopted. She might throw a teenage hissy fit. But we did what we did with the absolute best intentions. Be honest. Acknowledge that we’ve both mishandled it at times. Tell her how much you love her and what she means to you. You know no woman can resist you.”  
He smiled and his shoulders relaxed a little. “You can.”  
“I try,” she corrected. Her eyes travelled down to his mouth and it was all she could do to stop herself from kissing him. She dropped her hands and busied herself with taking a sip from her whisky glass.  
“Okay. I’ll do it tomorrow when we get home from the hospital.”  
Anxiety flared within Harvey and she didn’t know if it was the mention of the hospital or the thought of telling Belle that triggered it. They sat in silence for a while and she drained her whisky. “Do you remember when Belle was about eighteen months old, she packed a bag with a diaper and a cookie and her drink?”  
Chris smiled. “I asked her where she was going and she said ‘out’ like it was the most obvious thing in the world.”  
“And when she cried for hours when she found that dead starfish on the beach and we couldn’t get her to put it down? We had to let her name him and bring him home for a funeral.”  
“Simon? I remember him well. What about that time at Disney when you asked her if she’d pooped and she announced to the entire restaurant that no, she’d just farted?”  
Harvey laughed, burying her face in her hands. “Don’t! I still get second-hand embarrassment from that.”  
Chris rubbed her back and said softly, “It’s going to be okay, Harvs.”  
The laughter left her like he’d flicked a switch. “What if it isn’t?”  
“We’re not entertaining that thought,” he said staunchly. “We have to stay positive.”  
Harvey knew he meant well but his words annoyed her. He had no idea. “I need to put laundry on. Have you got anything you want me to wash?”   
She got up but he grabbed her wrist. “Harvey, you’re exhausted. Just go to bed.”  
She shook her head. “I’m far too tightly wound to go to sleep. I need to be doing something.”  
“Laundry in the middle of the night isn’t the answer. Let me unwind you.” He tugged on her hand, pulling her down onto his lap.  
Harvey hated that he made sleeping with him sound like it was the reasonable thing to do. She hated the way her body reacted to him, that, as much as she felt she should, she couldn’t say no. She needed the release he’d inevitably bring. She needed to be close to him, to be reassured and comforted. To know that he didn’t blame her for Belle’s illness because she was sure that she’d missed some clue, some sign, something that a real mother would have seen and understood.  
She pushed away her misgivings and let him pull her into his arms and kiss her. She felt the electrical charge shoot down her spine, turning on lights as it went. Sex with Chris was like a well-rehearsed but thrilling dance. They had no secrets left. He knew her darkest desires, those passing fantasies that came unbidden when she let her mind wander just as well as she knew his. For twelve years, she had waited for him to grow bored with her or to settle into a relationship and not need to satisfy his itches with her. It had never happened and Harvey never let herself dwell on the sense of relief that she felt.  
His mouth slid to her neck as his hands disappeared under her t-shirt. Her skin prickled uncomfortably. “I need to shower.”  
“Let me wash you,” he breathed, not stopping his assault on her neck.  
It was all over after that. Chris led her up the stairs, pushing her into the shower fully clothed and stepping in after her, pulling off their wet clothes and slowly, laboriously, soaping every inch of her body before finally pushing her back against the tiles, holding her up by her wrists as she wrapped her legs around him and the tension left her body in long, satisfying spasms. He kept her there while they caught their breath, the hot water cascading over them as her heart thudded deep in her chest.  
He wrapped her in her robe and grabbed a towel to lay on her pillow, then put her to bed. Her limbs felt achy and heavy as she curled up against him, her back pressed to his chest as he wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. She felt his fingers brush the back of her neck, moving her wet hair to make room for his lips. He kissed her softly and she felt his breath on her skin as he whispered words that she didn’t hear. Her thoughts were already drifting as she fell into a dreamless sleep.  
  
They woke up late the following day. It was a dark, dreary morning and the bedroom hadn’t brightened enough for Harvey to wake up naturally. Her sore, aching limbs protested as she forced herself to stand up. She cursed as she hobbled into the bathroom and gasped when she saw her reflection in the mirror. Birds nest did not do justice to the effect of having gone to bed with wet hair. With a groan, she turned on the shower and hopped in, placating her long hair with half a bottle of conditioner and combing out the tangles.  
Once she’d wrapped herself back in her robe, she went into her room to wake up Chris. He was sprawled across the pillows, the quilt barely covering his naked ass. They didn’t usually sleep naked when Belle was home so as not to invite awkward questions. Harvey noticed that more and more of the rules they’d made for themselves were being broken and ignored. Delicately, she ran her finger across his back, joining up his freckles, watching as his skin twitched and erupted in goosebumps.  
“You’d better be prepared to finish what you start,” he grumbled, turning his head and opening one eye to look at her.  
“Unfortunately, we overslept or I’d be only too happy to deal with your morning glory.”  
“What time is it?”  
“Almost ten. I need to wake up Belle.”  
Chris groaned and pulled the quilt over his head. Harvey smiled and wandered down the hall to Belle’s room, knocking softly before going in. All she could see was a handful of dark hair sticking out from beneath the covers. She was truly her father’s daughter. “Belle-Belle. Time to wake up.”  
“No!”  
Harvey opened the curtains although it was so grim outside that it barely made a difference. “Come on. We have to go to the hospital for your tests.”  
“But Mom, I feel better now.”  
“I know you do but we still have to find out why you got so sick in the first place. Bring your iPad and phone and your chargers so you don’t get bored. Do you want breakfast?”  
“I’m not hungry.” Belle gave up and popped her head out from under the comforter. “What if I have to stay there?”  
“You’re right, we should find out before we go. I’ll call the hospital while you get dressed.”  
Harvey went downstairs to retrieve her phone from her purse. There were a couple of messages from work saying they hoped everything was okay and not to worry about rushing back, and one that made her heart jump into her throat. ‘_Looking forward to seeing you tonight x_’  
She had completely forgotten she was supposed to have a date that night. Chewing on her lip, she made her way to her study and sat in the chair behind her desk. Obviously, she couldn’t go and she felt a stab of something that she wasn’t sure was relief or regret. She Googled the number for the hospital and spoke to a very nice receptionist who told her they were expecting Belle whenever she was ready and, yes, she’d need to stay in for a few days and they had a room all ready for her.  
Harvey hung up and buried her face in her hands for a moment. What kind of tests were they going to do that they needed to keep Belle in for so long? She itched to get to the hospital and speak to the doctor, but first…  
She scrolled to Guy’s number and hit call. “Hey, it’s Harvey,” she said when he answered. “How are you?  
“Hey!” He sounded thrilled to hear from her which made her feel even more wretched. “I’m well, thanks. How are you?”  
“Not great, actually. My daughter is sick. I had to go to Orlando to bring her home and now she has to go into hospital for more tests. I’m afraid I’m going to have to skip out on our date tonight.”  
“Nothing serious, I hope?”  
“We don’t know yet.”  
“Oh, Harvey. I’m so sorry. We can rearrange for another time?”  
She was unsure what to say, not really knowing what she wanted. “Sure. I don’t know when though.”  
“Just keep in touch. Let me know how you’re getting on.”  
Harvey looked up and locked eyes with Chris, who was standing in the door. “I will, thank you. Take care.” She hung up and rounded on him. “What the fuck, Chris?”  
“The door was open.”  
“That wasn’t an invitation to listen in to my call!”  
He shrugged, stepping further into the room. “You’re seeing someone?”  
“No.”  
“Oh. Because it sounded like you were sorry to skip out on your _date_.”  
“Wow! You really just stood there and listened to my entire call.”  
Chris was unapologetic. “I didn’t think we had secrets.”  
She raised an eyebrow. “We don’t have secrets?”  
“From each other,” he amended. “Harvey, please tell me what’s wrong? You’ve been off with me for ages.”  
“Nothing’s wrong,” she lied.  
He looked at her carefully and she knew he knew she was lying. He sighed resignedly then said, “So are you seeing someone?”  
“Are _you_?”  
“No. Are you?”  
“It doesn’t make one iota of difference to you whether I am or not.”  
“Harvey.”  
She sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to be deflected. “I met him at a conference a few months ago and bumped into him in Boston. He’s working here now. We went for a coffee and he asked me out for dinner. We haven’t been out on a date so to say I’m seeing him would be stretching the truth beyond its breaking point. Why do you care anyway?”  
“I care about you.”  
Her eyes flicked between his. What was that supposed to mean? “Wha—”  
“Mom? Have you seen my black ballet slippers?”  
Harvey took a deep breath. “You’re going to need them in the hospital?”  
“I have class tomorrow.”  
“No, muffin. The hospital said they’re keeping you in for a few days. We need to pack you a bag. Come on.”  
Belle protested but Harvey went out into the hallway and took her suitcase, dragging it upstairs. There was no way she wanted to be alone with Chris again. She unpacked the summer clothes from the suitcase and put in Belle’s slippers and dressing-gown, a couple of pairs of pyjamas, underwear and a couple of changes of clothes in case she didn’t want to sit around in her night things all day. She methodically unpacked and packed her toiletry bag and, by the time Belle dragged herself back into the bedroom, she’d almost completely repacked the case. “Do you want to take your blanket? Your own pillow?”  
“How long do I have to stay there for?”  
“They told me a few days. I don’t know what that means.”  
“I’ll pack the rest of my things.”  
Harvey knew that meant that Belle wanted to take Mrs Bunny. Mrs Bunny had once been the fat, fluffy rabbit toy that Chris had put in her crib on her first day home. Now her stuffing had been squashed down to nothing and her fur was matted but Belle loved her. Up until a couple of years ago, she had openly slept with her every single night, refusing to go to bed without her and throwing the most epic tantrums whenever Harvey managed to sneak her out to wash her. Recently Belle had been a lot cooler about the toy, trying to act as if she’d grown out of it, but Harvey often found her tangled in the covers when she made the bed.  
When she left Belle’s room, she found Chris waiting for her. He grabbed her arm and towed her into her bedroom, firmly closing the door behind them. “When were you going to tell me that they’re going to keep Belle in?”  
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you’d heard that conversation, too.”  
“I was going to tell her tonight.” He looked devastated.  
Harvey felt her anger drain away and for some reason, she felt annoyed by it. “You still can.”  
“While she’s in the hospital?”  
“Does it matter where she is? She needs to know. I’ve been thinking about this and we’re going to have to tell the hospital that you’re her dad. It’s only a matter of time until rumours start and it all comes out.” Her own words made her feel sick and she rubbed her stomach.  
Chris looked as if he felt just as sick as she did. “If you think it’s still the right thing to do then I’ll do it.”  
“You know what I think.”  
He looked at her as if he’d been about to argue but changed his mind. “Why don’t you drive us to my house? I can drop my bags off and we can take my car.”  
“Okay.” Harvey could barely concentrate on breathing in and out. Her thoughts were all over the place. The last thing she wanted to do was drive. She felt they were playing with time, that the longer Belle wasn’t in the hospital, the more likely it was that something would happen to her. For a few blissful hours, Chris had wiped out her stress and anxiety and allowed her to sleep. Now it was back, strong and oppressive, taking over her body so it was all she could do not to vomit.  
The one person she should be able to confide in, who would understand how she was feeling and help to ease the pressure, stood in front of her and she found she couldn’t talk to him. Chris was, at the very core, her best and oldest friend, someone who took the loyalty and honesty of his closest friends very seriously. She should have told him years ago but she’d kept it inside and let it eat away at her because she didn’t want to face the consequences. She kept her secret, the biggest of them all, and swore to herself that he could never discover how she had betrayed him.


	5. Chapter 5

Harvey liked Doctor Melanie Jones from the moment they met. She had a no-nonsense but kind demeanour and insisted they all call her Mel. She soon had the three of them relaxed and calm in Belle’s hospital room. She spoke directly to Belle, explaining all the tests she wanted to do and how long the results would take to come back. But, most importantly to a fragile Harvey, she seemed completely unimpressed with Chris’s presence. Unlike the nurses, who seemed to take it in turns to look at him under the pretence of taking Belle’s temperature or checking her notes.  
“I want to take a bone marrow biopsy. Although we can get lots of information from your blood, your bone marrow will give us a much better idea of what’s causing your symptoms. I’ll give you some medicine to make you sleepy and I’ll do the procedure myself. I’ve done it hundreds of times and, not to toot my own horn, I’m pretty good at it.”  
Belle smiled but asked, “Will it hurt?”  
“Excellent question. You won’t feel a thing because you’ll be out of it but afterwards you might feel a bit sore for a day or two. We can give you medicine to help. I’m also going to give you a platelet transfusion. It’s like the blood transfusion you had and we’ll keep an eye on you for any reactions. Now, I’m going to take your mom for a quick chat, then I’ll get someone to fit you with an IV and we can start running some tests.”  
“Um…Chris should come too,” Harvey said, getting to her feet.  
She and Chris followed Mel to a small office at the end of the corridor. She moved some files around to free up two chairs and indicated for them to sit. “I’m sure by now you’ve been looking up her symptoms on the internet and you think she’s got all manner of things, including leukemia. Anemia causes bruising and fatigue. There are many other diseases that cause severe anemia. So, until we get the test results back, I don’t want you to worry too much.”  
“You’re asking a lot,” Chris said.  
“I understand. Just try not to worry until we know what it is that you’re worrying about. I plan to keep Belle here until we have a diagnosis. Her immune system will be vulnerable and I want to keep a close eye on her.”  
“How long will that be?”  
“I don’t know. The bone marrow biopsy results will likely give me the answers and we should get some preliminary results within a couple of days, although it can take over a week for full results. I know this is scary for both of you but she really is in the best place and we’ll do everything we can to make her better.”  
“We have something we need to tell you,” Harvey said, casting Chris a glance. “You’re the first person we’ve ever told, not even Belle knows yet, but the hospital needs to know just in…just in case.”  
Mel sat on the edge of the desk and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m listening and whatever you tell me in this room goes no further, unless Belle is at risk of harm.”  
“She isn’t,” she said, wiping the film of sweat from her top lip. “It’s just incredibly complicated.” She looked at Chris again for reassurance. He nodded and squeezed her hand. “Belle is adopted, which she knows about. Chris is…her dad, which she doesn’t.”  
Mel’s eyebrows shot up her face. “My, that does sound complicated!”  
“We planned on telling her today, but…” Harvey ground to a halt, unable to continue her train of thought.  
“We don’t have to if it will be too much for her on top of everything else,” Chris finished for her.  
“I think it’s going to be a lot for her take in at any time, but from this point on I don’t think there’s going to be a better day than today.”  
Harvey frowned, taking the words in, inferring the meaning that the days were only going to get worse. She could feel rivulets of sweat running down her back. Chris was saying something but his voice sounded muffled and distant.  
“Harvey? Harvey?” Chris was somehow crouching beside her, holding one hand while Mel stood on the other side, taking her pulse. “Are you okay?”  
“What?”  
“You sort of zoned out.” He looked concerned. “You don’t look great.”  
“Thanks,” she muttered, “you know how to make a girl feel good.”  
“Wisecracking is usually a good sign,” Mel said, peering into her face. “When did you last eat?”  
“I…I honestly don’t know.”  
“It looks like low blood glucose.” She reached into the drawer of her desk and pulled out a bag of jellybeans. “Here, these will help but you need to eat.”  
“I want to get back to Belle.”  
“I’ll go out and get food,” Chris said, getting to his feet. “There’s a deli just across the street.”  
Once he’d gone, Mel stood over her while she ate a handful of beans. She immediately felt a lot less shaky.  
“You need to look after yourself,” Mel cautioned as they walked out of the office together. “You’ll be no good to Belle if you make yourself ill.”  
Someone called out to Mel and she excused herself, leaving Harvey to walk back to Belle’s room. She found her showing a video to the nurse who stood beside the bed. “Hello, Ms Brooks. I’m Maria, I’ll be looking after Belle today. We’re waiting for the anesthetic cream to numb her hand so I can put her IV in.”  
“Hello. Please call me Harvey.”  
“Where’s Uncle Chris?” asked Belle.  
“He’s gone to find some food. He’ll be back in a minute.”  
“My dance teacher uploaded a video from my tap exam and I want him to see it.”  
“Your daughter is quite the dancer,” Maria said.  
“She is,” Harvey smiled and sank into the chair beside the bed. “My Bellerina.”  
Maria checked her watched. “The cream should have made you nice and numb by now. Let’s get this tap fitted and then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”  
Harvey took Belle’s other hand and squeezed it gently while the nurse finished the prep and put in the IV. Belle watched, fascinated, but Harvey had to look away, staring up at the ceiling tiles while the needle went in.  
“All done. You are very brave. I had kids older than you scream the place down. I guess it helps that Captain America is your uncle!”  
"It only hurts for a minute." Belle shrugged easily, swelling under the praise.  
“So,” Maria said in an oh-so-casual tone Harvey had heard too many times to not know what was coming next, “is Mr Evans your brother?”  
“No. We’re friends. It’s an honorary title.” She smiled tightly.  
Chris chose that moment to walk into the room carrying a brown paper bag in one hand and three bottles of soda in the other. “I come bearing gifts.”  
“Did you get me anything?” Belle asked, scooting to the end of the bed to meet him.  
“I got you tuna, that’s your favourite, right?”  
Belle giggled. “That’s _your_ favourite. You know I hate tuna.”  
“Oh.” He looked crestfallen for a moment. “I’ll just have to sit here and eat it in front of you. You can have the crusts.”  
“Uncle Chris!”  
“Okay, okay. I guess you can have the ham and cheese I bought for the girl in the next room.”  
Maria gave Chris a million-watt smile. “She can’t eat for a little while we see if she has a reaction to the transfusion.”  
“Well that sucks,” he said, putting the bag on the cabinet beside the bed. “That’s worse than watching me eat a tuna sandwich.”  
Belle shrugged. “I can wait.”  
“I got chicken salad for you.” He handed Harvey a sandwich and pulled up a chair to sit beside her. “How are you feeling?”  
“A bit better. The candy really helped.” She unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite, leaning back with a sigh. “Thank you.”  
“You scared me.”  
She looked at him. “I’m sorry.”  
“When _did_ you last eat?”  
“I guess the day before yesterday. I just don’t have much of an appetite right now.”  
“Uncle Chris, look at this video of my tap exam!”  
Harvey watched the two of them as she ate, dark heads bent together as they shared the iPad screen. She tried to imagine Belle calling him dad. She could count the number of times she’d heard Belle use that word on one hand. She usually referred to her friends’ dads as ‘his/her father’. She hoped she would be able to understand why they’d lied, why they’d kept it from her.  
Once Belle had been hooked up to with the platelets for a while with no ill effects, Maria finally left them alone. Chris turned to Harvey. “Can I speak to you a minute?”  
With a surge of nausea, she got to her feet and followed him out of the room. “What’s wrong?”  
“Shall we tell her now? I think this is one of the only opportunities we’re going to get.”  
Harvey turned to look at Belle through the window in the door. “Yes. Do you know what you’re going to say?”  
“I…I think so.” He looked a lot like she felt; sick and scared. “Will you come in for emotional support?”  
“Sure.” She managed a smile, even as she wondered who was emotionally supporting her.  
They went back in the room and Chris stood beside the bed while Harvey hovered by the door in case anyone tried to come in. He kissed the top of Belle’s head and gently removed the iPad from her hands. “Sweet pea…I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.”  
“What?” She looked up at him, excitement shining in her eyes.  
He took a couple of deep breaths. “I’ve thought for so long about how I should tell you this and I think the best way is to just come out and say it.” There was a long pause in which Harvey looked around for somewhere to throw up. “I’m your dad.”  
Belle looked at him in confusion. “What?”  
“I’m your dad. Your biological father.”  
She turned her gaze to Harvey. “Mom? I don’t understand. You said I’m adopted.”  
“You are, sweetheart. We—”  
“Then how can he be my dad?” Her voice rose as tears sprang to her eyes.  
Harvey immediately started towards her but Belle drew away and she stopped in her tracks, feeling her heart crack in two. “It’s a long story and we’re going to explain everything…”  
“Belle, listen to me. I was young and incredibly dumb. I met a girl and one day she told me she was pregnant with you. She said she couldn’t look after you and she wanted to have you adopted. I didn’t want that, I wanted you in my life but I was too immature to cope with looking after you on my own. I went to your mom for help because she’s so smart, I knew she’d be able to think of a plan. And she did. She adopted you so I could keep you close.”  
“Why doesn’t anyone else know? Uncle Scott or Lisa?”  
Chris looked helplessly at Harvey but she was damned if she was going to do this for him, too. Besides, she was fairly sure that if she so much as opened her mouth, vomit was going to come out. She shook her head. “As I said, I was young and dumb. I wanted to keep you a secret. I didn’t want other people to know about you. You know what being famous is like for me, I don’t have any privacy. You’ve seen pictures of us together at Disney that we didn’t even know were being taken. If people knew you were mine it would be a million times worse. I didn’t want my lifestyle to stop you from having a normal childhood. To do that, we had to keep you a secret from everyone.”  
Belle was sobbing now, tears pouring down her cheeks. “You always told me not to tell lies but you were telling them all the time.”  
“To protect you,” Harvey said desperately. “We both love you so much. We know we’ve waited too long to tell you and we’re sorry. You’ve got a dad who loves you more than any—”  
“He’s not my dad!” Belle yelled.  
Both Chris and Harvey took an involuntary step back. “I _am_ your dad. I know you’re angry—”  
“You’re both liars! My parents didn’t want me and that’s why you adopted me.”  
“No!” Harvey said, trying to keep her voice level. “I _never_ said that. I told you I knew your mom, which I did a little, and that she couldn’t look after you. She was young and she wasn’t ready to be a mom.”  
“That just means she didn’t want me enough. And Chris didn’t want me either or he wouldn’t have let you adopt me.”  
Harvey opened her mouth but nothing came out. When Chris spoke, she realised that he was crying. “Belle, Harvey adopted you _because_ I wanted you.”  
“If you wanted me you would have looked after me yourself!” One of the machines she was hooked up to started to beep. Harvey moved towards her but again she pulled away. “Go away!”  
“Don’t speak to your mother like that!”  
“She’s not my mother and you’re not my dad. Get out!”  
Harvey felt her words like a punch. “Belle…”  
The door opened and Mel came in. She took one look at each of their faces and seemed to understand everything. “Belle, you need to calm down. Your blood pressure is going up. Why don’t your mom and your uncle wait in the relatives’ room until you’re feeling better?”  
“They’re not my mom and uncle. I don’t want to see them.”  
Harvey shook her head dumbly but Belle wouldn’t even meet her eyes. “Muffin, please?”  
Someone took her hand and tugged, leading her out of the room. She was too numb to protest. She let them drag her away and, after a while, push her into a chair. She pulled her knees up to her chest, letting the maelstrom of emotions she’d been holding inside consume her. Still she couldn’t cry. There were tears but she wasn’t crying. The barrier she’d built was too strong.  
“Harvey?” Mel’s voice broke through the cacophony in her head. “Are you with us?”  
She nodded. “Is Belle okay?”  
“Yes, she’s fine. She needs some time to process events so I suggest you and Chris go home and we’ll let you know when she’s ready for you to come back.”  
“You’re saying we can’t see her?” Chris’s voice but Harvey couldn’t bear to look at him.  
“I really think it’s for the best. She’s very upset.”  
“And she needs her parents. We need to explain…”  
“There will be plenty of opportunities to explain when everyone has cooled down. She’s about to have a surgical procedure, she has to be calm.”  
“I need to see her,” Harvey said quietly.  
“You can see her soon,” Mel said, crouching down in front of her. “I think everyone needs a break and some rest. Go home, eat a meal and get some sleep. She’s in the best possible place and we will look after her. I’ll call you later and give you an update, I promise.”  
Harvey knew there was no point in arguing, that it would just make things worse. She looked at Chris and quickly looked away, unable to bear his pain on top of her own. She slowly got up and walked outside, looking around to get her bearings. After a minute, he caught up with her and they took the elevator down to the garage. She walked towards the car, not seeing the car coming towards her until a loud honk made her jump and Chris yanked her back by the arm.  
“Jesus, look where you’re going!”  
“I…I didn’t…”  
“What is wrong with you? I know you’re stressed out and upset but I’ve never seen you like this.”  
“I don’t know, I just... Chris, what if she doesn’t want me to be her mom anymore?”  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped, opening the passenger door of his car for her. “Get in the car.”  
“I’m not being ridiculous. You heard her in there. _She’s not my mother_.”  
“She’s upset, she didn’t mean it. Get in the car.”  
“But—”  
Chris grabbed her shoulders, pushing her roughly back against the car. “You’re her mom and I’m her dad. She can’t change that. She’ll calm down and we can finish explaining it to her. Now get in the fucking car!”  
She looked at him in shock. “Don’t ever shout at or touch me like that again.”  
“I’m sorry. Harvey, I…” He dropped his hands. “I’m so sorry.”  
She got into the car and he closed the door. A moment later he opened the driver’s side and climbed in beside her. They sat in silence for a minute, staring out of the windshield, lost in their own private nightmares.  
“We could have avoided all of this if you'd just told her from the start.” Her voice was so quiet that she wondered if he’d even heard her. She was angry, putting it on him because it was easier than processing what was going on inside her. It wasn’t his fault.  
Chris's hands tightened on the steering wheel for a moment and he seemed to wrestle with himself, then he sighed deeply. He started the car. “I know.”  
She turned to look at him but, as he swung the car out of the space and headed toward the exit, something caught her eye and she watched as a man in a parked car followed their movement with his phone.


	6. Chapter 6

“What are you doing?”  
“Going home.”  
Chris had just pulled up in his driveway and, while he unlocked the front door, Harvey walked over to her car, digging around in her bag for her keys. “You’re in no state to drive.”  
“I want to go home.”  
“Then let me take you.”  
“I can drive myself.”  
“You’ve been zoning out all over the place. You really think it’s safe for you to drive?”  
Harvey found her keys and pressed the button to unlock the car. “I’ll be fine. It’s only a couple of miles.”  
“Harvey…” Chris strode from the front door to stand in front of her. “I know you’re upset with me but please don’t drive home.”  
She made the mistake of looking into his eyes. Her resolve weakened. “I’m fine.”  
“You’re not. You need a proper meal and you need to rest.”  
“How can I rest, Chris? My daughter hates me. She might have cancer. My whole world is falling apart and I’m expected to lie down and sleep?!”  
“She doesn’t hate you,” he soothed, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “It’s not going to be long before she wants her mom.”  
She wanted to believe him. “She’s never spoken to me like that before.”  
“And that’s how you know she doesn’t mean it. She’s confused and angry. Later tonight when she’s alone and sore from the biopsy, she’s going to want you more than anyone else in the world.” He gently took the car keys from her hand. “Please don’t drive home. Stay here, or at least let me drive you.”  
“I want to go home,” she repeated.  
“Then at least come in for five minutes while I pack a bag.”  
She knew she wouldn’t be able to shake him off, that he would want to stay with her. “Okay.”  
They went into the house. Harvey went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water while Chris went to his bedroom. Dodger, his dog, was still being looked after by one of their friends and she wondered when he planned on picking him up. Everything was quiet. She stared out of the window, unseeing. The disconnect she felt between what was happening and her ability to rationally process events was immense. Her thoughts were masked in an impenetrable fog, always just out of her reach.  
“Ready?”  
She gasped and spun around. Chris had changed his clothes and held a weekend bag in his hand. How long had she been standing there? “Yeah. Sure.”  
When they got to her house, Chris made her sit down on the couch while he made tea. It was quiet here, too, without Belle.  
“You’re almost out of milk. I’ll go to the store later.” He put two mugs on the coffee table and sat beside her. “How are you feeling?”  
She shrugged. “Like all of my thoughts and feelings are locked in a panic room and I have no way to get to them. You?”  
“Like I’ve been run over by a whole convoy of road rollers.”  
“Huh.”  
Neither of them said anything for a long time and their tea grew cold. “Harvey,” Chris said, turning to look at her, “have you got something you want to talk to me about?”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I mean that recently you’ve been low key mad at me – don’t deny it – and I don’t know why.”  
“I keep telling you I’m not mad at you.”  
“But you are.”  
“But I’m not.”  
“Bu—”  
“Chris! If you carry on like this then I am going to be mad at you!”  
He scowled. “You forget that I know you better than anyone. We’ve been friends for over twenty years.”  
“Is that what we are?”  
“Yes, of course.” His frown deepened. “Why wouldn’t we be friends?”  
She hesitated. Now really wasn’t the time. “What would you do if you found out I’d been lying to you. For years.”  
He shrugged. “It would depend on the lie.”  
“A big one. Huge. The biggest, fattest lie you can imagine.”  
“I’d be hurt but I can’t imagine anything we couldn’t get through.”  
Harvey sighed, rolling her head back to stare up at the ceiling. “That was one thing we never factored into our plans; what would happen if we fell out.”  
Chris’s phone rang in his pocket. He took it out, glanced at the display then turned the sound off. “We’re not going to fall out.”  
“We might. If you found out I’ve been lying to you.”  
He looked at her as his phone vibrated again. “Have you been lying to me?”  
She thought about his words. “Kind of. Not so much lying but definitely withholding the truth. It’s more of a betrayal.”  
“You’re freaking me out.”  
“It’s something you trusted me with. And at the time I thought I could do it. After a while, I realised that I couldn’t do it, but I carried on doing it anyway because keeping the truth from you was far, far better than the alternative.”  
“Harvey, you’re not making any sense. Are you talking about Belle?”  
“God no!” She managed a dry laugh. “Belle’s my world, you know that.”  
“Then what is it?” His phone vibrated again. “It’s Megan, she must have a bee in her bonnet about something. Let me just get rid of her.”  
Megan was his publicist and possibly the only woman in the world he was afraid of. Harvey nodded, picking up the mugs of cold tea and taking them into the kitchen. She took a deep breath, leaning against the sink as she watched the tea swirl down the drain.  
“But that’s impossible.” She heard Chris say, his voice getting closer. “Where?”  
She turned around to look as he walked into the kitchen. His face was ashen. “What’s wrong?” she mouthed.  
“Where’s your laptop?”  
“In the study.”  
He turned on his heel and headed for the study with Harvey trailing uncertainly behind him. They waited for the laptop to boot up and she tapped in her password, then stepped back to watch Chris as he opened the browser and typed in an address. YouTube opened and a video began to play. For a second she couldn’t make out what it was. Then they both heard, “_…didn’t mean it. Get in the car._”  
“Oh no,” she breathed, clapping her hand over her mouth. Then she saw her and Chris standing beside his car. She looked pale and frightened and he looked big and angry. “Oh no…”  
In the video, Chris grabbed her and pushed her back against the car. Then, clearly audible, “_You’re her mom and I’m her dad. She can’t change that. She’ll calm down and we can finish explaining it to her. Now get in the fucking car!_” The final shot froze on her shocked face, making the whole thing look a million times worse.  
“Fuck,” Chris muttered. “Megan, are you there? Is there anything we can do to get this taken down?”  
Harvey walked out of the room on shaky legs. She sank down on the stairs, hugging her knees up to her chest. This was a disaster, the absolute last thing that any of them needed. For it to get out before Belle had even had a chance to come to terms with it…  
Chris appeared in the study door then crossed the hall to sit beside her on the stairs. “Megan doesn’t think we can get it taken down because it was filmed on public property. Fans have already seen it and are discussing it all over social media.” He rubbed his forehead then turned to look at her with teary eyes. “I’m sorry, Harvey.”  
“Stop. You don’t have to apologise to me, this isn’t your fault.” She put her arms around him. “We’ll fix it somehow.”  
He gave a hollow laugh and put his arm around her. “I don’t think even you can fix this, Harvs.”  
“You should call your family. You don’t want them to find out from a covert video.”  
“Shit! This is it. Everyone’s going to know. And they’re going to think that I’m knocking you around!”  
“Stop it. Anyone who knows you will laugh at the thought. And that’s all that counts. Go, call your mom. I need to tell my parents, too.”  
“I really don’t want to do it over the phone.”  
“I know it’s not ideal but it’s out of our hands now. Maybe it’s for the best.”  
“Maybe… Harvey, what we were talking about just now?”  
“It can wait.”  
“I don’t believe you would ever betray me. Whatever it is that you think you’ve done, we can work it out.” He pressed his lips to her forehead for a long moment, then got up.  
Harvey watched him head back to the study and close the door behind him. Tears stung her eyes and she willed them to come. She wanted to cry so much, to let some of the pressure out, but they receded.  
She went up to her room to call her parents. She hadn’t told them that Belle was sick yet, thinking it would be better to wait until they had a diagnosis rather than listen to her mother’s histrionics for a moment longer than she had to.  
“Mom, it’s me. Is Dad there with you?”  
“Yes, but we’re just on our way out. Can we call you later?”  
“No. Can you put me on speakerphone, please?”  
“What is this about?” her mother demanded as if trying to ascertain the reason behind a cold call.  
“Mom!”  
There was a heavy, long-suffering sigh, some muffled sounds then her father’s voice. “Hello, pumpkin.”  
“Hello, Daddy. I need you both to listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you and I don’t want you to interrupt, Mother.”  
“We’re listening,” her dad said.  
“It’s about Belle. She’s not mine. I adopted her. She—”  
“What?!” Her mother’s voice was a whip crack.  
“What did I just say about interrupting me? Just listen. She’s Chris’s. He’s her dad. I went to California so that I could bring her home after she was born. I never told you I was pregnant and I never pretended to be. I just let you assume. Only Chris and I knew the truth, until today. We told Belle and she didn’t take it very well. She’s in hospital. She might have leukemia. So, you can see why I’m really not in the mood for your usual bullshit, Mother. I’m sorry I lied. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to tell you but really it was Chris’s secret and I’ve had to wait for him.”  
“I always knew that Evans boy would ruin your life!”  
Harvey rolled her eyes. “Ma—”  
“You were going back to Harvard. You should have an MBA and your own hotel by now.”  
“All still achievable goals. Why don’t you ask me how your granddaughter is?”  
“How is she? Where is she?”  
“She’s in Boston, I went to Orlando and brought her back. She had some bruising and fatigue so Chris took her to the hospital. She had to have a blood transfusion and today she’s having platelets and a bone marrow biopsy.”  
“Why aren’t you there now?”  
Harvey closed her eyes tightly. Her head hurt. “We told her that Chris is her dad. She got upset. The doctor sent us home while she calms down.”  
“That poor baby.” To her great surprise, she could hear tears in her mother’s voice. “I hope you’re both satisfied. This is where your stupidity and lies have got you and now that poor little girl is all alone in a hospital room!”  
“This is very disappointing,” her father added. “You can’t play with a child’s life like that. What on earth were you thinking?”  
Her mother’s disapproval she could deal with, even relished the confrontation, but her father’s disappointment was something she couldn’t bear. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “We did what we thought was best for Belle. Chris was…he wasn’t ready. I did the only thing I could think of.”  
“You foolish girl.”  
Harvey took a shuddering breath. “There’s a video. Someone filmed us talking in the car park. It…it looks like Chris hurts me but he didn’t and he wouldn’t!” The line stayed surprisingly silent. “Mom? Did you hear me?”  
“I heard you. What you and that boy get up to is no business of ours. Tell me where I can find my granddaughter.”  
Harvey gave her the details and, before she could say anything else, her mother hung up. At least she assumed it was her mother. She wasn’t close to her parents, certainly not like Chris and his family. She hadn’t even seen her sister in at least five years. But her parents loved Belle, more than she thought they would, especially her mom. How her news must have hurt them, to find out that their daughter had lied to their faces for over twelve years.  
She curled into a ball on her bed and closed her eyes. She didn’t sleep, she felt every second as it ticked by, but she couldn’t move. Sometime later, minutes or hours, she didn’t know, Chris stumbled into her room. She could barely lift her head to look at him. He was a mess. Whatever his family had said to him had obviously had the same effect as her parents’ words had on her.  
He laid beside her and pulled her into his arms, dragging her across the bed to hold her tightly against him, almost too tightly. She clung to him, not a rock but a fellow castaway in a raging sea of their own creation. He was solid and warm, and her inner turmoil calmed a little as she breathed in his smell. In that moment, on her bed, they were the only two people in the world.  
Harvey wasn’t sure if she’d slept or not but there was a moment when she opened her eyes and the room was almost dark. She pulled away from Chris to find him awake. “What did your mom say?”  
He heaved a heavy sigh. “I think we’re going to be visiting her in the hospital if she doesn’t calm down. They’re flying home tomorrow morning. What about your mom and dad?”  
“They’re very disappointed in me. I think they’re going to the hospital to see Belle.”  
“I don’t care what anyone says, we did the right thing.”  
He needed her reassurance. She wriggled out of his grip enough to look into his eyes. “The most I’m willing to concede is that we’ve handled it badly. But adopting Belle, keeping her close? That was absolutely the right thing to do.”  
He pulled her close again, his chin on her shoulder. When he spoke, his mouth was so close to her ear that she heard his voice as if it came from inside her head. “There’s nobody else I’d rather have gone through all of this with.”  
He kissed her neck, sending shivers down her back and goosebumps down her arms. It wasn’t a sexual advance but his lips on the most vulnerable part of her made her body react in a hundred different ways. As much as she hated herself for it, she lived for these moments with him.  
Her phone rang from beneath her pillow and she fished it out. “It’s Mel.” Chris finally loosened his grip and she sat up. “Hello?”  
“Hello, Harvey. How are you?”  
“I’ve been better.”  
“I heard about the video. That must be tough.”  
“Just a little.”  
“I had the pleasure of meeting your mother.”  
“That must be tough.”  
She heard a smile in Mel’s voice. “You’ll be pleased to hear the bone marrow biopsy went off without a hitch and the samples are now with the lab.”  
“That’s good. How’s Belle?”  
“She’s great! She’s having some food with your mom and dad.”  
“Can you please tell her we love her and we can’t wait to see her when she’s ready?”  
“Of course. I’ll check on her again in the morning and give you a call.”  
“Thank you.” Harvey hung up and turned to Chris. “They’ve done the biopsy and Belle’s okay. My parents are with her.”  
His shoulders slumped with relief. “I’m happy she’s not alone.”  
“Me too. Although I’d prefer someone who was on our side.”  
“Remind me who that is?”  
She bit her lip. “What are you going to do about the video?”  
“For now, nothing. A representative will not be immediately available for comment. I need to be sure Belle’s okay and that she understands.”  
Harvey frowned down at her phone. She didn’t want to tell Chris about the ‘OMG are you okay?!’ messages that were lighting up the screen. That video was horrible and whoever had posted it had deliberately made it look like Chris hurt her. “I saw the guy who filmed us, in the garage.”  
“Why didn’t you say something?”  
“I didn’t really make a connection and it wouldn’t have made a difference. As we were leaving, I saw him sitting in a car pointing his phone at us.”  
“It’s my fault,” he muttered, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. “I know better than to talk about private stuff in public.”  
“It’s not your fault.” There was silence. Harvey passed the time by blaming herself for a hundred things that weren’t her fault.  
Chris slapped his hands on his knees, making her jump. “I need to blow off some steam. Let’s take the night off. We’ll switch off our phones, order a ton of takeout, drink a few beers and see where the night takes us.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Why can I smell pizza?” Harvey mumbled, turning over and immediately regretting it. Her stomach lurched. She lay, immobile, wondering if she needed to run to the bathroom but the urge to throw up dissipated. She opened one very sticky eye and tried to focus. Chris lay beside her. He had a cowboy hat covering his face. She painfully opened her other eye and pushed herself up on her elbows to squint at him. Yup. Definitely a cowboy hat.  
She realised, with some concern, she couldn’t move her legs. Trying not to panic, she pulled off the covers. She was naked, which was par for the course, but she wore a pair of cowboy boots. Exhausted, she fell back onto the pillows. What the hell had happened last night? And why could she smell pizza?  
When she woke again, a desperate thirst drove her out of bed. She clunked awkwardly into the bathroom, still in her boots, and drank directly from the tap, long hair swirling down the drain. Then she caught sight of her reflection and shuddered. She sat on the toilet to remove the cowboy boots and, again, her nose filled with the smell of pizza. She ran the shower and got in, letting the hot water run over her while she tried to piece together the events of the night before. There had been pizza and Chinese takeout and, for some reason, tacos. There had been beer and…she sighed, everything suddenly falling into place. Tequila. Body shots. Dancing. A lot of dancing. And then, inexplicably, the slutty cowgirl Halloween costume she’d worn a few years back… Things became mercifully fuzzy after that. Fuck. She hated tequila.  
She screamed. A proper, shrill scream. Something huge and slimy slid down her back and plopped at her feet. She flapped her arms and screamed some more.  
“What? What happened?” Chris appeared in the bathroom, obviously still half asleep. “What’s the matter?”  
She whimpered, jumping out of the shower. “Something just crawled down my back!”  
Chris raised an eyebrow, leaned into the shower and picked up the thing that had fallen on the floor. It was pale and slimy and dripped something red as he held it up between thumb and forefinger.  
“Oh my fucking god, what the hell is that?!”  
“A slice of pizza.”  
Harvey didn’t find it funny. Chris laughed so hard he had to clutch the vanity for support as he fought to control himself. She shot him a haughty look and got back into the shower, taking extra care to wash her back. When she got out, she cleaned her teeth and combed her wet hair back from her face. She felt a lot more human.  
When she went back into the bedroom, Chris sat up in bed wearing nothing but the cowboy hat. “Good afternoon, partner.”  
She cringed. “Was I embarrassing?”  
“No,” he chuckled. “You were very sexy. I didn’t know I had a thing for cowgirls until last night.”  
“Wait, did you say afternoon?”  
“Yes, it’s almost two.”  
“Fuck!” She ran downstairs in search of her phone. She’d shut it in her desk drawer when they’d agreed to turn off their phones. She looked at the screen. That was a lot of messages and missed calls. She scrolled through until she found the number for the hospital and pressed call. While she waited for them to page Mel, she dug around for some old earphones and plugged them in so she could read her messages.  
The video had gone viral. It seemed as if all of her friends had seen it and sent messages asking what was going on and imploring her to let them know she was alright. She hadn’t considered that people would assume Belle was hers and Chris’s. As she scrolled, Guy’s name caught her eye and she opened his message. ‘_I wasn’t sure whether to contact you or not. I saw a video of you today, is that really Captain America? It looked pretty hands on and I just wanted to check that you’re okay. I’m only a call away if you need me_.’ Harvey let out a frustrated sigh. She couldn’t have people thinking Chris hurt her, in that video or at any other time.  
There was noise on the line and Mel’s voice said, “Doctor Melanie Jones.”  
“Hello, Mel, it’s Harvey. I’m sorry I missed your call, I slept in.”  
“I’m glad you managed to get some rest. Belle is fine so there’s no need to worry. I called to make sure you’re okay. I actually saw the video and—”  
“I’m fine,” Harvey cut her off. “Everything’s fine. The video ended there to make it look bad. Right after it happened, I yelled back at him, he apologised, then we both got in the car and drove away. I saw the guy filming us so I know he caught that part. I’m so upset that people think Chris would hurt me or anyone else.”  
“I have to admit, I found it hard to believe but if this job has taught me anything, it’s that you never know what goes on behind closed doors.”  
“I don’t know how to redress this. Chris doesn’t want to say anything publicly about the video until he knows Belle is okay.”  
“I sent one of our counsellors in to see her. I hope you don’t mind. I thought it would help her to have someone impartial to talk to and perhaps work through what happened.”  
Harvey closed her eyes. With all that was happening to Belle, she’d spent the night drinking tequila and dressing up as a cowgirl. Shame swept over her. “Do you think she’ll see me if I come down?”  
Mel drew in an audible breath. “She might but perhaps give it one more day?”  
“I want to talk to her so badly. There’s so much that we didn’t get to tell her that will help her to understand.”  
“I know this is hard for you. For all of you. But Belle is very ill and her wellbeing has to be our priority. I don’t want to keep you apart, the best thing for her is to have you both here with her. Let her have today to speak to the counsellor for as long as she needs. I’ll call again this evening.”  
Harvey had no alternative but to acquiesce and she hung up, feeling more wretched than ever. There was a quiet tap on the door and Chris walked in. “Are you okay?”  
“Mel doesn’t think we should see Belle today. She must have so many questions and only you and I have the answers.” A movement outside the window caught her eye. Her insides writhed like a pit of serpents as she recognised the car swinging into the drive and groaned. “Your mom is here.”  
“Fuck.”  
The doorbell rang. The two of them froze. Like a condemned man, Chris walked slowly out into the hall and opened the door. “Hi, Mom.”  
Lisa stormed into the house and straight into the living room, barely sparing a glance for either of them.  
“Hi, Lisa, please come in,” Harvey muttered.  
“I’m sorry,” Chris murmured, quickly rubbing her back. “Let’s get this over with.”  
“I might have known I’d find you hiding out here.” Lisa turned to look at them as they walked in.  
“I’m not hiding out,” he said calmly.  
Harvey looked around the living room in alarm. She hadn’t yet faced the detritus of the previous evening. Empty beer bottles and leftover food littered the coffee table, along with grains of salt and discarded lemon wedges. The empty bottle of tequila sat in pride of place, balanced precariously on top of the TV. Harvey bit back a groan when she saw her gingham shirt cast carelessly over the back of the armchair, her Daisy Dukes on the floor and her bra hanging jauntily from a lampshade. What had she been doing last night?  
Lisa cast a knowing look around the room. Harvey wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. “Explain yourselves.”  
“There’s nothing to explain,” Chris said. “I told you everything on the phone.”  
“Did you? Then why don’t I understand anything that’s happening?”  
“Belle is mine. Harvey adopted her. End of story.”  
Lisa went to sit down on the couch, paused, then moved to the armchair. “I think that’s only the beginning of the story. I’d like to hear the rest.”  
“Ma, please. This isn’t the best time –”  
“Oh, I’m sorry. Were twelve years not long enough? Shall I come back when she graduates college?”  
Harvey moved to sit down and saw, mortified, the reason Lisa hadn’t taken that seat. She hurriedly sat down, bunched up the discarded panties and stuffed them into the pocket of her robe. She glanced at Chris who paced up and down in front of the windows. “We understand that you’re upset, angry even, and it is a long story. But Belle is sick and the last thing she needs is warring factions.”  
“I’m well aware that my granddaughter is in the hospital. Where you both should be right now.” She looked around the room, not bothering to hide her disgust. “Instead of partying the night away and, by the looks of it, trying for another one.”  
“Ma!” Chris snapped. “That’s enough.”  
Harvey felt her face redden. For twelve years they’d managed to keep that side of their friendship a secret. It seemed as if the truth finally wanted its day in the sun and no secret was safe.  
“Chris, I don’t understand. Why on earth did you keep this from me?”  
He sighed, dashing his fingers through his hair. “At the time it seemed like the best thing for Belle. Harvey would let everyone think she was her mom and she could give her a normal upbringing.”  
“You think it’s normal to let a child believe her father is her uncle?”  
“It was for the best.”  
“You keep saying that but your actions tell me you didn’t do anything for the best. You should have come to me and let me raise her.”  
“What would we have told people about where she came from? Someone would have said something and everyone would know.”  
“You’re right,” she nodded. “It’s much better that the whole world finds out you’ve got a child from an internet video in which you put your hands on a woman.”  
Chris collapsed on the couch beside Harvey. “We didn’t know that was going to happen.”  
“It wasn’t like that. He didn’t me—”  
“And you,” she rounded on Harvey. “After everything I’ve done for you, you couldn’t come to me to tell me what was going on?”  
“Did you want to hear it from me, Lisa? Or did you want to hear it from Chris’s mouth? You’re his mother, not mine. It wasn’t my place to tell you.”   
“There was one time, just once, when I looked at that baby and I saw Chris. I thought it was my imagination but it preyed on my mind for months afterwards and I convinced myself that you’d never do that to me. Neither of you would keep something like that from me. My own son wouldn’t keep my grandchild a secret from me.” She rummaged in her purse for a tissue and wiped her eyes. “Why didn’t you come to me, Chris? Why? I would have loved to have brought her up.”  
“It was more complicated than that. I asked Harvey to help me find a solution. If it wasn’t for her, Belle would have been adopted by strangers and we wouldn’t even know where she was right now. Our way was the only way.”  
“She should be with her family.”  
“She is. She’s with her mom.”  
“You know what I mean.”  
“Yes, I do, and I repeat, Harvey is her mother.”   
“You should have come to me,” she repeated, her voice faint. “I can’t believe you’d keep something like this from me.”  
Harvey stared down at her hands, a gnawing fear growing inside her. She hadn’t felt it for a few years and now it was back, insidious as ever. Lisa would take Belle from her. She’d persuade Chris that it was best for Belle seeing as Harvey didn’t even notice she was sick and they would take her.  
Chris looked at his mom. “Stop being so dramatic. I know this is a shock and that I’ve hurt you. I am genuinely sorry, Mom. I’m sorry. But you’ve got a granddaughter who needs you right now.”  
“How can you be so casual about twelve years of deceit? Don’t you see anything wrong with what you’ve done?”  
“I’m not saying we haven’t made mistakes but I’m not going to apologise for what we did, only that I didn’t tell you sooner. We can go over and over about how you feel and how you don’t even know who I am but nothing is going to change the past. It is what it is.”  
Harvey pressed her lips together and stared hard into her lap. She’d seen Chris and his mom go toe-to-toe more than once over the years but she had never, ever seen Lisa Evans speechless. There was a long and heavy silence. Both Lisa and her son were as stubborn as each other, they could sit there in silence forever. Harvey cleared her throat softly. “We were going to tell you. Right before Chris got offered Captain America. But the role came along and we thought it was better to wait.”  
“If Belle hadn’t got sick, when were you going to tell her?”  
Harvey didn’t have an answer and neither did Chris. Soon wasn’t an adequate answer. When Chris’s Marvel contract was officially up even less so. “We hadn’t made firm plans but we were going to talk about it when we got back from Disney.”  
Lisa shook her head, unable to hide her disgust. “I want to see her. If I’m allowed.”  
Chris rolled his eyes. “Yes, you’re allowed. Just don’t upset her.”  
His mother got to her feet and drew herself up to her full height. “I doubt very much if anyone could upset her any more than her own mom and dad have.”  
Knowing she’d landed her punch, she left. Harvey felt winded, as if she wasn’t getting enough air when she breathed in. They listened as the front door closed and her car started up and pulled away. Silence hung heavy in the air as they both took a moment to process the encounter.  
“I’m sorry,” Chris mumbled, not looking at her.  
“Stop apologising.” She sighed and got to her feet. “I need to put some clothes on and clean up.”  
“I’ll clean up.”  
“Then do you mind if I go for a walk? I really need to start trying to get my head around all of this.”  
“You don’t have to ask, Harvey.”  
She shrugged uncomfortably. “I just didn’t want to stick you with the tidying.”  
“Come on. We’ve both seen a lot worse than this after my parties. I can handle takeout and a few lemon wedges. Go.”  
She bent down to pick up the remnants of the cowgirl outfit. “Chris, how did this happen?”  
He shook his head. “I really don’t remember. I think it was something to do with an authentic cowgirl position.”  
She cringed then gave a huff of frustration. “You know better than to let me drink tequila.”  
“I do know.” A devilish smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “But it’s always so much fun.”  
  
Harvey walked aimlessly. The wet sidewalk felt gritty under her boots and her breath clouded in the cold air. The last vestiges of her hangover dissipated and she was left with the familiar numb, foggy feeling of the past few days. As she walked, she scrolled through the messages on her phone, sending out a standard ‘everything is fine’ reply. When she got to Guy’s message, she hesitated, unsure of what she wanted to do with him. From the little time she had spent with him at the conference and on their coffee date, he seemed like a nice guy. No pun intended. It might be cool to get to know him a little better. Before she could change her mind, she hit call.  
“Harvey, hi. How are you? I’ve been worried about you.”  
“I’m fine,” she said automatically. The word had lost all meaning to her. “I got your message.”  
“I was concerned when I saw the video.”  
“Yeah, and I appreciate it. It looked worse than it was. We’re both under a lot of pressure right now. Even more so because of the video.”  
“That is the guy who plays Captain America though?”  
“Yeah.”  
“And he’s your kid’s dad?”  
“Yes, but it’s even more complicated than it seems.”  
“Wow. That’s quite an achievement.”  
“Right?”  
“Are you at the hospital?”  
“No. Belle kicked us out when we told her Chris is her dad. I haven’t seen her since right before that video was taken.”  
“You poor thing. You are having a rough time.”  
“Tell me about it,” she said wryly.   
“Can I do anything? I’m a good listener and I’m great at ordering coffee. I could meet you somewhere?”  
She dithered, torn between want and need. She wanted to see Guy, she needed to talk to Chris. There were a million and one things they needed to sort out. More than anything, she wanted to address the video, although she knew he wouldn’t allow it. With the exception of a few candid pictures of her and Chris that had been stolen from social media by his fans, she had never been part of his press before. His preference was to ignore everything and either wait for it to fizzle out or post a picture of his dog to distract everyone. It worked every time. However, she suspected even Dodger couldn’t get them out of this.  
“I can’t right now. But soon. I’ll be spending a lot of time in the city once Belle starts talking to me again. We could grab a quick lunch or a coffee next week, maybe?”  
“Just call. I’ll make time for you.”  
Harvey smiled. He had a deep, calming voice. She liked it. “I will.”  
“Harvey, before you go. I know it’s really none of my business but I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes here, least of all Captain America’s.”  
“You’re not stepping on his toes. We’re just friends. We’ve always been just friends. I will tell you everything when I see you.”  
They said goodbye and Harvey pushed her phone into her pocket, turning to walk back towards home. All she’d wanted for the past twelve years was to be able to tell people the truth. Now it was out in the open and, for better or worse, she had her wish. She could, if she wanted, tell Guy everything and start with a completely clean slate for the first time ever.  
Another nameless emotion joined the others swirling around in her brain, faster and faster like a tornado until they were just a blur and she couldn’t distinguish one from the other. She felt fear and apprehension. Anxiety in the form of a feeling of impending doom had settled in her stomach and promised to be her constant companion. If she could only get her thoughts in order. If only she could release some of the pressure she felt inside. She needed to cry but for some reason, she just couldn’t let go.  
When she got home, she found Chris in the kitchen, drinking a beer and stirring something on the stove. He smiled when she walked in. “Feeling better?”  
“Not really. I need to see Belle. I need to see that she’s okay and to answer her questions. It’s killing me that she won’t see me. I need to know what’s wrong with her, to know what we’re facing.”  
“Sweetheart…” Chris frowned and put his free arm around her shoulders. “We’ll go to the hospital first thing in the morning and we won’t leave until she sees us.”  
“Do you think your mom will go there today?”  
“I don’t think there’s a force in the universe that could stop her.”  
Harvey bit her lip and carefully measured her next words. “Chris, I’ll understand if you want to take Belle now that everyone knows.”  
He let go of her, stepping back to look at her. “What?”  
“Your mom wants her. I know she does.”  
“Harvey,” he said quietly and she got the sense he was trying hard to stay calm, “nobody is taking Belle. You’re her mom. I mean, yeah, I’ll be able to see her more, if that’s what she wants, and my family will want to spend time with her but she’s staying here with you. Why would you even think that I’d want to take her away?”  
“I don’t really know what I’m thinking right now. Maybe that Lisa would do a better job. She’d probably have realised there was something wrong with Belle weeks ago. I don’t have a mother’s instinct. If I did then things never would have got this far.”  
“You need to stop blaming yourself for things that really are not your fault. There was no way either of us could have known that Belle was sick. She had no symptoms except a few bruises. She’s a gymnast, a dancer, a cheerleader, she’s forever throwing herself around, why would you think that you’d need to be concerned about a few bruises?”  
“I should have known. I should have been the one to take her to the doctor.”  
“We’ve had this conversation. You need to stop this, okay? Blaming yourself and going around in circles is not the way to get through this. Belle needs you to eat and sleep and go in fresh and strong every morning.”  
He was right. Deep down she knew that and she tried to hang onto it. But all of the niggling doubts she’d had over the years had joined forces. Tiny voices told her she wasn’t a proper mother, a real mother. A real mother would have known. Belle would hate her, resent her. She would want to finally be where she’d belonged all along, with her blood family. Harvey was nothing, the voices said. Nothing at all.  



	8. Chapter 8

Harvey had just climbed into bed when her phone rang. The hospital’s number flashed on the screen and her heart plummeted into her feet as she answered it. “Hello?”  
“Hello, Ms Brooks. My name is Angela Monroe, I’m one of the doctor’s looking after Belle. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about, she’s just been having a bit of a rough day and she’s asking for you. Do you think you’ll be able to come in?”  
Harvey was out of bed before the woman had finished speaking, looking around for something to put on. “I’ll be there within the hour.”  
Chris sat up, looking at her in alarm. “What’s wrong?”  
“It’s okay,” she soothed. “Belle’s fine. She’s just asking to see me.”  
His grin was bigger than her own if that was even possible. “See, I told you!”  
She looked at him sitting in the bed. “Aren’t you going to get dressed?”  
“She’s asking for _you_, Harvey, and that’s completely okay. I’ll drive you there if you want but she doesn’t want me tonight.”  
“What if she does want you and they just didn’t say anything? She’ll be so upset.”  
“She won’t be. I’ll be there first thing tomorrow, just as we planned. Do you want me to take you?”  
She chewed her lip and shook her head. She felt miserable. “No. You get some sleep.”  
As Harvey dressed, she realised her car was still at Chris’s. She didn’t want to make him drive all the way into Boston and back so she called for a cab. When she went back into the bedroom to say goodbye, he was looking at her disapprovingly. “What?”  
“You called a cab. I would have taken you.”  
“I know that. You need to rest, too.”  
“We’ll get your car tomorrow.”  
“Okay.” Harvey bent to kiss his cheek but he pulled her down beside him and softly kissed her mouth. Immediately, her heart began to pound. He never kissed her like that unless it was a prelude to sex. His hands gently held her face, slipping into her hair. When they broke apart, she fought to control her breathing.  
“Tell her I love her,” he said as if nothing had happened. “See you later.”  
Harvey went downstairs to find her purse and wait for the cab to show up. It seemed to be taking forever for her heartbeat to return to normal. She sat on the stairs to wait, thinking of how much had changed since she’d last sat there. Before all of this, she would have given both kidneys for Chris to kiss her like that. She dreamed of it. Now, it felt like a burden she didn’t want. She was already heavily conflicted over her feelings for him and now really wasn’t the time for him to make it worse.  
  
With no small sense of trepidation, Harvey walked along the corridor to Belle’s room. She knocked quietly and opened the door. The room was dark apart from the lamp above the bed which illuminated Belle in a pool of light as she sat up in bed, her iPad in her hand. For a second, her face lit up when she saw her but she quickly tried to arrange her features into cool nonchalance. Harvey smiled. “Hello, muffin.”  
“Hi, Mom.”  
“How are you?”  
“Fine.”  
“The doctor said you had a rough day.”  
She sniffed airily. “I’m okay now.”  
Harvey stood by the door. “So…shall I go?”  
“No!” Belle said quickly, then realised how uncool she’d been and slumped back onto her pillows. “I’m still mad at you.”  
“That’s fine. I understand.”  
“But I want to talk to you.”  
“We can talk.”  
“But I don’t want you to lie to me.”  
“Okay. How about you ask me anything you want, anything at all, and I promise I’ll answer you with total honesty?”  
Belle nodded and put her iPad on the cabinet beside the bed. “Can I have a hug?”  
Harvey sucked air in through her teeth. “Honestly? I wasn’t really prepared for physical contact…”  
“Mom!” She giggled.   
She crossed the room and wrapped her in her arms. The warm flood of emotions took her by surprise as she breathed in the familiar smell of her hair. “I’ve missed you, baby girl.”  
“I missed you, too.” She wriggled over to the other side of the bed and patted the empty space. “Sit with me.”  
Harvey sat on the bed and swung her legs up, lifting her arm for Belle to nestle against her.   
“Why did you adopt me?” she asked, her voice soft and quiet.  
Harvey let out a shaky breath. She’d promised honesty. “Well, I guess it’s because I was a little bit in love with your father.”  
“You were in love with Chris?” Even her daughter was wide-eyed about this revelation.  
“I think so. I mean, I didn’t realise it at the time, or maybe I was in denial. When I look back, I think that’s what I was feeling. When I first met him, we were only a couple of years older than you are now and he was the first friend I ever really had. We used to spend a lot of time together, all our time, really, and I loved him like a friend. Like a brother. I think, though, by the time he came to tell me about you that I didn’t really love him like a friend anymore. When he told me about you, I could see how upset he was that he might lose you if your birth mom put you up for adoption and it broke my heart. I did it for him, and for you, and also a little bit for me.”  
“What do you mean?”  
Harvey sighed. “Because you’re his. When I adopted you, I got a part of Chris that nobody else had. A part that was just mine and, no matter how famous he got or where he went or who he was with, would always be mine.”  
“Did you tell him you loved him?”  
“No. You’re the only person I’ve ever told.”  
“Wow, really?”  
“Really.”  
Belle’s big blue eyes looked at her steadily. “Am I like him?”  
“Can’t you see that you are?”  
“I think so,” Belle mused. “We both love dancing and being outdoors.”  
“You’re kind like he is. You love dogs. And you’re both very funny.”  
“We like to win.”  
“Oh god, yes!” Harvey laughed, rolling her eyes. “So competitive!”  
“Do I have to call him dad?”  
She paused, her laughter dying away. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Chris knows that this is a very difficult situation and that you need some time to get used to it. He’ll understand if you don’t want to call him dad.”  
Belle was quiet for a moment, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. “I think I want to see him.”  
Harvey’s entire body shifted as if every cell had suddenly exhaled. “Okay. Well, whenever you’re ready you only have to ask. He’ll be here tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that and every day until you get out of here.”  
“When am I getting out of here?”  
“I don’t know. I wish I did.”  
“I hate it here.” A tear rolled down her nose and dripped onto the pillow. “I want to go home.”  
Harvey instinctively wrapped her arms around her, pulling her even closer. She held her daughter as she sobbed and begged to go home and all she could think of was the growing sense of helplessness, of her own uselessness. She stroked Belle’s hair and shushed her, feeling her hot tears soaking through her t-shirt. “You’ve been so brave, Belle-Belle. You’ve just got to be brave a little longer until we find out what’s wrong with you.”  
“And then what?”  
And then what? Harvey sighed resignedly. “Add that to the list of stuff I don’t know. I’m sorry.”  
Belle sniffled and dried her eyes on her sleeves. “Mom?”  
“Yes, muffin?”  
“Are you mad at me because I yelled at you?”  
“I could never be mad at you for expressing yourself. I wish I could let go so easily. We hurt you and you let us know. That’s never not okay.”  
“I’m sorry I said you’re not my mom.”  
“It’s forgotten.”  
“Is Chris mad at me?”  
“No. Nobody is mad at you. Nobody at all.” Harvey wiped her thumbs across Belle’s cheeks. “Let me tell you something. When you were born and I brought you home to Massachusetts, Chris had spent months buying all of this baby stuff and decorating your nursery. He was so scared and nervous. The second he held you in his arms, he fell hopelessly in love with you. I saw it in his eyes. He wanted to do everything for you. He fed you, bathed you, changed your diapers, even got up in the middle of the night when you cried. It hurt him so much to not be able to openly be your father. We did what we had to do to protect you, Belle. He wanted you to have a normal childhood.”  
She wrinkled her nose. “He could have told me. I wouldn’t have told anyone.”  
“You will tell anyone who listens that Captain America is your uncle. You’d have a twenty-four-hour news channel if you’d known he was your dad.”  
“Once Becca Walker asked me what it was like not having a dad and I told her that Chris was like my dad.”  
“You have a great relationship with him. Even though he couldn’t openly be your dad, he’s been there for you in ways that you can’t even imagine. He’s helped me make decisions for you, he chose your schools, he found your dance teachers… He’s done as much as he could without making it obvious who he really was. Although things are very stressful with you being sick and everyone being mad at us for lying to them, that part of our lives is over now. I think he’s really relieved he can properly be your dad. If you’ll let him.”  
She didn’t say anything for a long time and Harvey thought she’d fallen asleep. She was just about to carefully extricate herself when Belle said, sleepily, “I guess it’s not really lying if you’re trying to protect someone.”  
Tears stung her eyes and she squeezed them shut. “That’s right, muffin.”  
“Will you stay until I’m asleep?”  
“Of course. And I’ll be back in the morning with Chris.”  
“I love you, Mom.”  
“I love you, too.”   
  
Harvey sat with her head against the passenger window of Chris’s car as he drove them into Boston. She felt exhausted and a dull pain throbbed behind her left eye. They had been woken up by the discordant symphony of their phones ringing in unison. Her call had been from the hospital, asking them to go in to discuss the reporters setting up camp outside the main entrance. His call had been from his publicist who had spent her evening batting away requests for comment.  
Chris had been awake when she’d arrived home in the early hours of the morning and they’d sat up for another hour whilst she told him as much as she could about her conversation with Belle. She could feel his elation at the thought of seeing her again.  
He laid a gentle hand on her knee and she turned to look at him. “Are you okay?  
For some reason, the question set her teeth on edge and she tried not to show her irritation. “I’ve got a headache.”  
Keeping his eyes on the road, he leaned across to open to the glovebox. He reached in and pulled out a bottle of Advil. “Have you got water?”  
She nodded, opening it and dropping two capsules into her hand. “Thank you.”  
He glanced at her a few times before speaking again. “I know this is an intensely stressful situation but I’ve never seen you like this. You’re hanging on by a thread. Talk to me.”  
“I’m fine.”  
“No, Harvs. No. You’re not fine. And it’s okay not to be fine. You can tell me that you’re angry or scared or sad. You can talk to me.”  
She didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say. She couldn’t tell him how she was feeling because she didn’t know herself. Her phone rang, saving her from having to struggle with words she didn’t have. “It’s Mel,” she told him as she answered.  
“Hi, Harvey. I understand you’re on your way in?”  
“Yeah, we’re about ten minutes away. We have to meet with the hospital management.”  
“I’m sorry. The tabloid press is trash. I heard you saw Belle last night and she seems a lot happier today.”  
“Yes.” Harvey couldn’t have hidden her smile if she tried. “We had a long talk. She’s going to see Chris when we get there.”  
“That’s great news. I have more slightly good news; we have a diagnosis. If you come find me before your meeting, I can give you a quick rundown then we can talk in-depth later.”  
Harvey turned to Chris. “She has a diagnosis.”  
He took a breath and let it out through puffed cheeks. “How did she sound?”  
“Like Mel,” she shrugged. “You know she doesn’t give anything away. I bet she’s shit-hot at poker.”  
He reached across and took her hand, entwining his fingers with hers. “At least we’re finally going to know.”  
Harvey looked down at their hands. She could feel a fast pulse and couldn’t tell if it was his or hers. “She wants us to go see her before the meeting. Will we have time?”  
“We’ll make time. Nothing is more important than Belle.”  
  
When they got to the hospital, Chris cruised around the block so they could check out the press situation. At barely eight o’clock, already a handful of photographers and reporters had gathered outside.  
Harvey sighed and shook her head. “This isn’t fair. How can they camp outside a hospital for sick kids?”  
“They don’t have any morals.” Chris pulled into the parking garage and found a space. “The woman I spoke to this morning said that this entrance is safe, but just in case…” He reached behind her seat and pulled out a baseball cap, plopping on top of her head. “And put your hood up.”  
She adjusted the strap and fed her ponytail through the back. “This isn’t exactly inconspicuous.”  
“It means they can’t get a clear shot of your face. Editors don’t buy pictures of hats and hoods.”  
“Is this really what your life is like?”  
“Sometimes. It depends on who I’m dating. Come on.”  
They climbed out of the car and Chris glanced around, although there was nobody lying in wait for them. Once they were in the elevator, Harvey pulled her hood down but left the hat on.  
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to her chest, then, when she looked down, he flicked her nose.  
“Chris!” She thumped his arm, probably hurting herself more than she’d hurt him.  
He laughed, putting his arm around her shoulder and pulling her against him for a moment. “You fall for it every time.”  
“You’re such a dork,” she grumbled, making him laugh even harder.  
The elevator stopped on the first floor and an influx of people got in. One woman looked at Chris curiously although it might have been because he was suddenly engrossed in a poster on handwashing. When they got out at Belle’s floor, they found Mel at the nurses’ station, giving a briefing. Harvey’s anxiety spiked while they waited for her to finish.  
“Come with me,” Mel said briskly, leading them to her office. Once they were all seated, she looked at them both in turn. “First of all, the good news. Belle doesn’t have leukemia.”  
Harvey let out a sigh of relief and turned to look at Chris, who was smiling. “Not leukemia.”  
“But,” Mel said sternly, focusing their attention back on her, “that’s the only good news. Belle has very severe aplastic anemia. This means she’s not producing enough red blood cells. There is a small chance that she is genetically predisposed to this condition although in the vast majority of cases it’s idiopathic. I’m telling you this now so you don’t waste time wondering if you did anything wrong.”  
“Is it curable?” Chris asked. “How do you treat it?”  
Mel tapped her pen on her desk for a moment before answering. “Because Belle is so young and her condition classed as very severe, the best way forward for her is an immediate bone marrow transplant. That is the only cure. There are other treatments which are very successful although they merely put the disease into remission. How long that remission lasts varies, although it can be lifelong.”  
Harvey put her head in her hands, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips. “A transplant?”  
Mel nodded, then looked at Chris. “I’m assuming she doesn’t have any full siblings?”  
He shook his head. “No. And no half-siblings, on my side, at least.”  
“I’ve been thinking about how best to approach this. When we meet later, the transplant coordinator will be there. I think the best route is to test you and your family. Does she have any first cousins?”  
“Yes. I’m not sure they know they’re her cousins yet though.”  
“First cousins offer a good chance of a partial match. It’s a very quick test, just a cheek swab. They don’t even have to come to the hospital, we can send the kits out to them.”  
“What happens if nobody is a match?” Harvey asked quietly.   
“Why don’t we talk about that later when you’ve both seen Belle and we have more time? Let’s meet with Belle at, shall we say, one o’clock?”  
Harvey nodded and Chris said something but the fog in her head was back with a vengeance. They got up and she followed him outside, back to the elevator. She was dimly aware of Chris’s hand on her back, guiding her along. It felt strange to be locked out of her own head and also so detached from what was going on around her.  
She felt as if she only blinked and, suddenly, they were sitting around a conference table with a bunch of people she didn’t know. They were talking and she tried to focus.  
“We can provide extra security if you’re concerned, Mr Evans,” a woman said while scribbling furiously on a notepad.  
“That’s not necessary. I have my own people who can look after Belle.”  
A younger, prettier woman sat opposite Chris. Whether consciously or not, she stroked the side of her neck as she spoke. “We were hoping a joint statement, read by you, would help. There would be no need for the media to be present if they knew they would not be getting a story.”  
Chris shook his head. “That wouldn’t change a thing. There would just be more of them.”  
“Mr Evans,” a man this time, wearing an ill-fitting suit and a bad combover, “you must understand the position this puts us in. We have to think of our other patients and staff –”  
“Do you want us to take Belle elsewhere?”  
“No, but –”  
“Then what do you suggest we do? If I engage with these people, even to ask for privacy, it’s going to make them even more rabid for a story.”  
Harvey stood up and everyone turned to look at her. “This is bullshit. I’m going.”  
Chris got up and put his hands on her shoulders, peering into her face. “Are you okay?”  
“This isn’t important,” she told him. “You said it yourself, nothing is more important than Belle. These people are supposed to be running a hospital but instead of letting us speak to a doctor about our daughter’s diagnosis, they want to court the press.” She turned to the people at the table. “Your legal department can call the outlets and tell them to leave. They’re trespassing on private property and infringing the rights of your patients. We don’t have to have a big song and dance because Captain America is in your hospital. I have to go.”  
“Harvey, wait.” Chris caught her hand. “Just wait for me outside. One more minute.”  
She looked up at him. His blue eyes drilled into hers. “Okay.”  
He released her hand and she stumbled out of the door into an unfamiliar corridor. She had no recollection of getting from Mel’s office to wherever they were now. All she could think of was how Mel had spoken exclusively to Chris. Chris was the only one who could help Belle. They wouldn’t even bother testing her to see if she was a match.   
The door opened and Chris came out. He looked tired and stressed and Harvey felt a pang of something she couldn’t identify. “Come on,” he said wearily, his hand on her back to guide her along. “You need to eat. We’ll get a sandwich and then go and see Belle.”  
She shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”  
“You’re going to eat something.” He took his phone from his pocket, frowned at the screen for a moment then put it back. “The last thing I need is for you to end up in the hospital, too.”  
“I feel sick.”  
“Probably because you haven’t eaten. You know, I’d really like it if you stopped arguing with me.”  
“I’m not arguing with you. I’m telling you I feel too sick to eat.”  
Chris ignored her and they took the elevator up to the cafeteria in silence. She trailed behind Chris as he picked up a tray and loaded it with fruit, soda, chips and sandwiches, then they found a table and she watched him divide the food between them.  
“Eat.” His tone was no-nonsense.  
She looked down at the food and her stomach heaved. “I told you –”  
“You feel sick because you’re hungry. Eat the damn sandwich.”  
Harvey bowed her head, the peak of her cap hiding her pink cheeks from him. Fine. She’d eat his stupid sandwich. And if she threw up on his shoe then it would serve him right.  
Annoyingly, as she chewed her way through the chicken sandwich, her stomach settled and welcomed the meal. She realised how hungry she was as she munched on the potato chips. She pretended Chris wasn’t watching her with an expression of smug satisfaction as she finished the savoury food and moved on to the bowl of fruit.  
“See, you feel better, right?”  
“Yes,” she muttered grudgingly. “Thank you.”  
“Have you ever heard of aplastic anemia?”  
She shook her head. “Have you?”  
“I don’t think so,” he said, taking out his phone, pausing, then laying it down beside his plate. “I want to look it up but I want to wait so Mel can explain it to us properly.”  
“I think if she’s not producing blood cells, that’s like bone marrow failure? I don’t know, I was always bad at biology.”  
Chris smiled. “You aced everything at school, Harvey.”  
She shrugged, uncomfortable. “Well, it didn’t get me very far, did it?”  
“You heard what Mel said, it’s either genetic or idiopathic. There’s nothing you could have done.”  
Harvey fell silent. He didn’t know that. None of them did. Idiopathic meant the cause was unknown, not that there wasn’t a cause at all. For all they knew, she could have done something wrong. Given Belle the wrong foods or taken her to the wrong place or just not looked after her properly. It could still be, and probably was, all her fault.


	9. Chapter 9

As they walked along the corridor to Belle’s room, Chris’s walk, usually long, quick strides to get where he was going as fast as possible, slowed to a halt. Harvey pulled him to one side out of the traffic of people. “Are you nervous?”  
He rubbed a hand over his chin and nodded. “A bit.”  
“I know it’s difficult but this is the moment you’ve been waiting for since the day I brought her home. You don’t have to hide from her anymore.”  
He let out a breath in a small laugh. “I haven’t been this scared of an eleven-year-old kid since Matt Cardell tried to drop me in the trash in sixth grade.”  
Harvey smiled and rubbed his arm. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think she can pick you up.”  
“I just…I don’t want to be a disappointment to her.”  
“You’re not a disappointment. The past few days have been a lot for her to take in. She feels fine, if a little tired, and suddenly she’s in hospital being told she’s really sick when she doesn’t feel it. Lots of people are in and out of her room, poking her around. She’s out of her routine and away from her friends. Then she finds out that the man who she’s hero-worshipped all her life is actually her dad. It’s a lot for her. All she wants is the truth.”  
He nodded, visibly psyching himself up. “I can do that.”  
“And I’ll be right outside if you need me.”  
“Woah, back it up. Outside? _Outside?!_”  
“This is between you and Belle. You don’t need me there.”  
“I do need you. Please, Harvs, I can’t go in there on my own. You don’t have to say anything, you can just sit and observe, but please come in with me.”  
Harvey shook her head in disbelief. “You deserve an Oscar for playing Captain America when you fall apart so easily at the mere thought of being alone in a room with your own daughter.”  
“Stop judging me!” Chris said in a wheedling tone as she tried to hide her laughter.  
“Steve Rogers would never –”  
“Oh, come on, he wouldn’t have got in this mess in the first place. I don’t know, maybe if all of this had happened once I’d made a couple of Cap movies, it wouldn’t have panned out like this. I totally shirked my responsibilities.”  
“You haven’t shirked, Chris. You’ve been…” she searched for the right words, “a silent partner. I guess I’ll come in with you, seeing as you’re scared of little girls.”  
He smiled as they continued the walk along the hallway. “You know, Steve’s probably not scared of spiders, either.”  
“That would certainly cut down on the post-midnight ‘_Harvey, there’s a spider in my bedroom_’ phone calls.” He laughed but stopped abruptly as they reached Belle’s door. She squeezed his hand and whispered, “You’ve got this.”  
He took a deep, steadying breath and opened the door. Belle sat up in bed, eating Jell-O whilst simultaneously watching a movie on the TV and a video on her iPad. She looked up as they walked into the room, her face uncertain.  
“Hello, Belle,” Chris said, edging towards the bed. She gave him a small smile.  
Harvey, now an expert at internalising her emotions, didn’t roll her eyes. “Hello, muffin. How are you?”  
She shrugged awkwardly, turning off the video. “I’m okay.”  
“Is it okay if we talk?” asked Chris, tentatively sitting down on the chair closest to the bed.  
Belle nodded, reaching for the remote to turn off the TV. The room got very quiet. Harvey tried to pretend she wasn’t there and took the chair furthest away from them.  
“First of all, I want to apologise. I’m sorry that I upset you and I’m sorry I lied to you. Things were very different for me when you were born. I was a different person. These aren’t excuses and they don’t make what I did okay. But I’ve got to be honest, Belle, the only thing I’d change is telling you sooner. At the time there was no way I could have looked after you. I was immature and irresponsible. I lived mostly in LA and I travelled all the time for work. I didn’t want my family to look after you because I didn’t want people to know about you. Not because I felt shame or that I didn’t want you but because my life isn’t normal. With every passing year, I get more famous and more people are interested in me and start digging around for details. I didn’t, and still don’t, want that for you.”  
“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell your family about me.”  
“I know. I know it’s messed up. At the time I thought if I didn’t tell anyone then nobody could let anything slip to the wrong people. I should have trusted my family more. They’re very upset with me, too.”  
“Lisa said she’s going to disown you.”  
Chris smiled. “Believe me, that’s the least of what she’s got planned. Lots of people are upset and angry and none of that is your fault. Everyone loves you and wants you to get better.”  
Harvey wanted to stop Chris from shouldering all the blame when she knew she had been just as complicit. Her heart felt heavy in her chest as she watched a single tear roll down the side of Belle’s nose.  
“I don’t know how to feel.”  
“That’s okay. I know you must feel betrayed and as if I’ve pulled the rug from under you. I never intended to wait this long to tell you. I guess I really didn’t think through how it would affect you and I made the mistake of thinking that because we had such a great relationship that it would be easy for you to accept.”  
Harvey had to give him credit, he was ticking all of the boxes. She’d pretty much forgiven him for everything ever just listening to him. He spoke quietly, hesitant at times, but mostly with confidence, owning his mistakes and letting Belle see his genuine remorse.  
“I just want things to go back to the way they were,” she cried.  
Chris got up and hugged her. He didn’t hesitate. Belle sobbed into his chest. “Sweetheart, I wish I had a time machine because I would do things so differently. But we can’t go back.”  
Harvey blinked away her own tears. What was the point if she still couldn’t actually cry?  
“I don’t know what to do,” Belle said between hiccupping sobs. “Everyone says it’s okay to be angry or whatever but I don’t know if I am angry. I’m just confused. It’s a lot…”  
“We can do this however you want. I’m still going to come here every day with your mom. If you want to just hang out, we can hang out. We can talk. Or, if you don’t want to see me, I’ll wait outside. I’m…I just want you to feel safe and to be happy.”  
“Do I have to call you dad?”  
“No.” He shook his head vehemently. “It doesn’t matter if you never call me dad. Although it’s probably best that you don’t call me uncle anymore. Just Chris.”  
Belle nodded and wiped her eyes on her pyjama sleeves. “Okay.”  
He enveloped her in his arms once more, squeezing her tight. “I love you, Belle. More than anything and anyone, and I always have. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make you happy.”  
“Will you get me a Dr Pepper?”  
“If that’s what you want.”  
“And a Kit-Kat.”  
“Okay.”  
“And a puppy,” she added slyly.  
“Now you’re pushing your luck!” Harvey said as Belle pouted  
He turned pleading eyes on her. “Let her have a puppy, Harvey.”  
“Chris!”  
He chuckled, kissed Belle on the forehead, then turned to Harvey and ruffled her hair. He dodged the slap she aimed at his hand. “Can I get you anything?”  
“Coffee. Please.”  
Once he left the room, Harvey got to her feet and crossed to the bed. “Are you okay, muffin?”  
Belle nodded solemnly. “I feel a bit better.”  
“It’s really important that you don’t feel any pressure. If you’re not ready to forgive us or to play happy families, that’s fine.”  
“It’s not that. I just feel weird around him now. Like, he’s my _actual_ dad. That’s weird.”  
“I can understand that.”  
“I’ve been thinking about the past a lot and I see how he’s always been there. It’s not like he left us.”  
Harvey shook her head. “He never has.”  
She sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”  
“You need to follow your heart. Nobody can tell you what to think or what to feel.” Harvey smoothed Belle’s hair back. “You look tired. Did you sleep okay?”  
“Yeah, I’m just always tired.”  
Harvey sat on the bed beside her. “Well, the good news is that we know what’s wrong with you now. Mel’s going to come in soon to talk to us about it.”  
Belle’s eyes grew big and fearful. “Is it leukemia?”  
“No, it’s not. It’s called aplastic anemia. That’s pretty much all I know. Mel will be able to explain it to us properly.”  
“There’s a girl just down the hallway that has leukemia. Her name’s Summer.”  
“You’ve been making friends?”  
Belle nodded. “There’s a rec room. I go there in the evening when I’m bored.”  
“Grandma and Grandpa came to see you? And Lisa?”  
“Yeah. Lisa said that we’ll have to find a name for her seeing as grandma is taken.”  
Harvey raised an eyebrow but tried not to show her surprise. “How about Nana? Or Meemaw?”  
“Maybe Nana, if she likes it. She said she’ll come in soon, she’s going to text me. Mom…” She looked up at her, hesitant to say whatever was on her mind.  
“Go on.”  
“Do you st –” she stopped talking abruptly as the door opened. “It doesn’t matter.”  
Chris walked in carrying two cups and a bottle, which he gave to Belle. He handed a cup to Harvey then sat on the chair beside the bed. “I just saw Mel, they’re on their way in.”  
Harvey blew on her coffee and tried not to let her feelings show on her face. Far from feeling relieved that it wasn’t leukemia, she felt much more concerned about an illness she’d never heard of and knew nothing about.  
The door opened again and Mel walked in, accompanied by an older woman. “Hello.” Mel smiled. “This is Angela Berry, our transplant coordinator.”  
They all said hello and shook hands. The two women pulled chairs up to the bed and sat down. Mel laid her clipboard on her lap and looked around, her eyes settling on Belle. “There’s a lot to get through so I’m going to dive right in. You have a disease called aplastic anemia. Even though it’s very rare, we’re familiar with treating it here and you’re not the first case I’ve seen. Aplastic anemia is the failure of the bone marrow to produce new blood cells. I know from our previous conversations that you understand how the body makes blood and what the different blood cells do. The white cells fight infections, your red cells carry oxygen and remove carbon dioxide around your body and the platelets make your blood clot if you cut yourself or have a bleed. You don’t have enough red blood cells, which is why you’re pale and constantly tired, you don’t have enough white blood cells, which means your body can’t fight infection, and you don’t have enough platelets, which is the cause of the bruising and means your blood won’t clot properly if you start to bleed.  
“Because you’re so young with your whole life ahead of you, the best way for us to treat this is with a bone marrow transplant. The transplant team would rather we call it a stem cell transplant but let’s stick with bone marrow for now. A successful transplant is the only way we know to cure this disease. We’ll try to find someone, hopefully in your family, whose bone marrow profile matches yours and we’ll take some from them and give it to you, just like a blood transfusion. For you, it’s nice and easy. It doesn’t hurt and you’ll be able to watch your dance videos and eat ham and cheese sandwiches while you have the transplant.”  
Angela turned to Chris and spoke for the first time. “Belle’s best chance of a donor is familial. Because she doesn’t have a sibling, we’ll test the rest of your family but the chances of a full match are less than one percent. It might be that we can proceed with a partial match, or you might want to contact her birth mother so we can test her side of Belle’s family. In the meantime, we’ll search the national register for an unrelated stem cell donor.”  
Harvey felt as if she were looking at the scene from a million miles away. Belle and Chris. Chris’s family. Faye. They were all real and vital. She was the one who didn’t belong. The one who had nothing useful to add. She was nothing but a glorified babysitter.  
“…discuss this later.” Chris’s voice brought her back to the room and she looked at him as he spoke. “It’s not an appropriate conversation right now.”  
Angela looked chastised and Harvey wondered what she’d missed as his tone had been fairly mild and innocuous. “My apologies.”  
Mel cleared her throat. “If we find a good match for a transplant, there are a couple of things that we’ll do to give your body the best chance of accepting the donor cells. The first is a course of ATG. We’ll talk some more about that in a moment. The second is a course of high-dose chemotherapy.” The atmospheric change in the room was immediate and probably measurable by nearby weather stations. Belle looked at Harvey in alarm. “Ah, yes. Big bad chemo. Right now, I just want to run over your options. We’ll talk in-depth about each treatment, the pros and cons and all of the possible side effects another time, when you’ve had a chance to take it all in.  
“I mentioned ATG, which stands for anti-thymocyte globulin. It’s the standard drug therapy for aplastic anemia and works on the theory that aplastic anemia is caused by the immune system reacting against the bone marrow. The drug eradicates the attacking cells and allows the bone marrow to start making blood again. It’s not a fast process. It can take three to six months for the treatment to take effect, and that’s if it’s successful. You’ll still need red blood cell and platelet transfusions at least once a week, and you’ll take other drugs, such as antivirals and antibiotics to make sure you don’t pick up an infection. You can try ATG first and if it doesn’t work you can look at a transplant but we can’t do it the other way around. If the transplant fails, the only option is another transplant from a different donor.”  
“How long before you know if a transplant is successful?” Chris asked.  
“We expect to see results within a few weeks,” Mel said. “This brings me to another subject I wanted to discuss. I think Belle should stay with us for the time being. Her ANC levels are zero, a condition called neutropenia, which means she has no chance of fighting off an infection. I also want to fit a Hickman line to make drawing blood and administering drugs and transfusions safer and easier.”  
Harvey’s chest felt tight as she struggled to contain her panic. She couldn’t bear it. How did anyone expect a child to be able to deal with all of this? More than anything she wished it was her in Belle’s place, that she could do something to take it all away from her.  
“What’s a Hickman line?” asked Belle.  
Mel leaned forward, resting her clipboard on the bed beside Belle. “Do you remember we talked a little about a PICC line?”  
“In my arm?”  
“That’s right. Well, a Hickman line goes straight into your chest and comes out of a small incision.” While Mel spoke, she drew a little diagram of a torso and marked where the line would go in and come out. “You’ll be asleep, like for the biopsy, so you won’t feel anything.”  
“What happens to me while we decide which treatment I’m going to have?”  
“You’ll have blood and platelet transfusions a couple of times per week. In the meantime, we can test anyone who wants to be tested and look for a match. Even if you decide not to go down that route, it’s better to start the process than wait. It takes about a month for the initial results to come back.”  
Belle’s face dropped. “A month? And I have to stay here the whole time?”  
“For the time being,” Mel said, gently.  
“What about school? And my dance classes?”  
Harvey rubbed Belle’s back and said, “We’ll speak to your teachers and make sure you don’t miss anything.”  
“But…my birthday. And Christmas.”  
Harvey looked helplessly at Chris as she wrapped her arms around a now crying Belle. “We’ll think of something. You can still have a special time.”  
“Mr Evans,” Angela said, digging around in her bag and producing a plain white box, “we can do your test now, if that’s okay? It will only take a minute. We can arrange another time to talk.”  
They all watched as Angela swabbed the inside of Chris’s mouth. It was over in a few seconds. As she put the swabs into a tube and screwed the lid on, he sat forward.  
“What about Harvey? Aren’t you going to test her, too?”  
Her heart stopped for a second before starting up again very fast. She hid her face in Belle’s hair.  
“Oh, well, I understood she isn’t Belle’s b –” Angela blustered as he cut her off.  
“Mel just said you can test anyone who wants to be tested. She’s got just as much chance of being a match as any other non-blood relation.”  
“We generally don’t test…the cost…”  
“Is immaterial. You need to test Harvey, too.”  
Angela’s face went an unflattering shade of red. “I’ll come back later with another kit,” she muttered and shot out of the room.  
Mel’s expression was typically impassive but Harvey thought she saw a glimmer of a smile. “Do any of you have any questions for me?”  
“Only about million,” Chris muttered. “We need some time to talk, as a family.”  
“Of course you do.” Mel got to her feet with a smile. “I’ll come to see you tomorrow and we can talk some more.”  
  
Chris ordered lunch to be delivered, rather than either he or Harvey risking being seen by the waiting media outside. They spent the afternoon with Belle, watching movies and researching aplastic anemia. Harvey made notes as she scanned the screen of her phone before eventually laying her pen down with a heavy sigh. “No two stories are the same. There is no sure way to come at this disease.”  
“I noticed,” Chris replied, not looking up from his screen.  
Belle picked up Harvey’s notepad and scanned the scribbled notes. “I can’t even read this, Mom.”  
“Let’s hope I can when I go back to them. How do you feel about the treatments Mel talked about, muffin?”  
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess the bone marrow transplant is the best one. She said it’s the only cure.”  
Chris looked up at her. “We’ll get more details tomorrow. We didn’t even ask what the success rates are.”  
Harvey glanced down at the pages of notes. “I think I read somewhere ATG is about seventy-five percent successful at putting the disease into remission. It might be lifelong remission or it might only last a few months. There’s no way of knowing.”  
He sighed and got to his feet, stretching his arms over his head as he yawned. “How are you supposed to choose? Both make you feel even shittier than you do already.”  
“If we can find a match, I think I want the transplant.”  
He looked at Belle carefully. “Are you sure? Because ultimately, it’s your decision. We’ll go with whatever you want.”  
“I read someone’s story on Reddit who did ATG first and they said they really regretted it and wished they’d gone straight for transplant.”  
“Even though you’ll need chemotherapy?”  
“It’s only once. I won’t have to take it loads like someone with cancer.”  
More than anything, Harvey enjoyed being with Belle again and the three of them laughing and talking as if nothing had happened. If she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend they were all at home. Everything outside of the hospital room was chaotic. Their friends and families adjusting to the news that Belle wasn’t hers at all but Chris’s, the wider population learning Chris had a child he’d hidden away for years, the damn video constantly cropping up on social media… And now the news their daughter had some rare disease which needed a transplant her newly-realised family were highly unlikely to be a match for. Chris had shut down the transplant coordinator when she’d tried to talk about Faye and Harvey wondered why. Surely if nobody in the Evans clan turned out to be a match the next logical step would be to contact Faye?  
Unsurprisingly, another member of the transplant team came down to do Harvey’s test and arrange a meeting for the following day. It didn’t lift her spirits nearly as much as hearing Chris insisting they test her but at least it felt as if she was doing something, however likely it was she would be a match.  
They stayed until Belle began to get sleepy. Harvey tucked her into bed, making sure anything she might need was in easy reach. “We’ll be back first thing tomorrow, okay? I’ll bring you some clean clothes. Is there anything else you want?”  
“My baby album, please.”  
She smiled. Her baby album didn’t just cover her baby years, but every birthday, Christmas and vacation. Chris featured heavily on every page. “Sure. I’ll put it in my bag tonight so I don’t forget.”  
“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”  
She shook her head and kissed Belle’s forehead. “Let me worry about that. I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight. I love you.”  
“I love you, too, Mom.”  
“Night, sweet pea,” Chris said.  
Belle hesitated and Harvey, who had turned away to put her jacket on, held her breath. “Goodnight, Chris.”  
She let the breath out as quietly as she could, trying not to betray her disappointment. But, as they walked out of the door, Belle said, “I love you.”  
Chris’s smile could have powered the entire Eastern Seaboard. They said a final goodnight and left. Once they were in the car, Harvey said, “I’m going to quit my job.”  
He ran a hand around the steering wheel, his jaw working. “I thought you might.”  
“You don’t think I should?”  
“Yeah, I do. I certainly won’t be taking on work while Belle needs us.”  
“Then what’s wrong?”  
“I told you, I’m worried about you.” He turned to look at her. “You know you don’t have to worry about money or medical bills or anything like that, right?”  
“I know,” she said softly.  
“Harvey, I want –”  
But she never found out what he wanted because, at that moment, a flash lit up the interior of the car for a split second. They both looked up at the photographer standing in front of the car as he fired off a perfect shot of their shocked faces.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there's a lot of info in this chapter. I've done so much research into this disease and I wanted to convey a little of how overwhelming it is to get a diagnosis with a ton of information you can't really take in, so thank you for ploughing through it!


	10. Chapter 10

Chris had a very particular way of dealing with his fame. He didn’t court the media. He wasn’t the kind of celebrity that sold access to himself to tabloids or magazines and, because of that, he had a greater expectation of privacy than a lot of his peers. It was a trade-off that Harvey knew he took very seriously. He kept to himself and in return he expected to be left alone.  
She spent an uncomfortable evening trying to occupy herself with housework whilst Chris paced around the living room, having intense conversations on the phone with his publicist. She unloaded the dishwasher and tried not to listen to his voice as the silence carried it through the house. He was pretty angry and she felt it was best to just wait for the storm to pass. Once she’d put all of the dishes away, she padded silently across the hall and just had one foot on the bottom stair when he appeared in the living room doorway.  
“Harvey.”  
She turned to look at him. “What?”  
“Stop creeping around your own damn house and get in here.”  
As she collapsed onto the couch and pulled the throw across her lap, he crossed to the drinks cabinet and poured a hefty whisky, holding it out to her. She shook her head and he knocked it back in one. He poured another, smaller, measure and sat at the end of the couch, pulling her legs onto his lap. “You know what I thought today?”  
“What?”  
“I thought ‘_I wish she had leukemia_’.” He looked at her, waiting for her shock and outrage. When it didn’t come, he said, “I wanted there to be something to attack, something to fight.”  
“I can understand that,” she said quietly, hating herself for the thought even crossing her mind.  
“This disease, this idiopathic, empty bone marrow disease. It feels like it’s dishonest, like it’s cheating because it doesn’t give anything to throw punches at.”  
Harvey chewed her lip, pleating the edge of the blanket between numb fingers. “How is this all going so wrong? I mean, the video and everyone finding out about Belle just minutes after she found out about you, the paparazzi…what’s next? I feel like an actress in a really bad daytime soap except I don’t know my lines and I’m naked.”  
“You have that dream too, huh?”  
“Sometimes.” Her phone beeped and she reached out to look at the screen. “Huh. According to _Just Jared_, I’m your childhood sweetheart.”  
“What?” he grumbled, half getting out of his seat to retrieve his phone from the coffee table. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Harvey, I am so sorry that you’re being dragged into this.”  
She waved his apology away. “I don’t care about me. Just keep them away from Belle.”  
“I’m trying.”  
“I’ve been thinking. Belle really doesn’t want to stay in the hospital for her birthday and Christmas but she needs to be isolated. I’m sure it’s not going to be long until someone tracks us down here. Maybe I could take her to my parents’ beach house. Nobody knows about it and she’d be shielded from all of this drama.”  
He shook his head. “It’s too far from the hospital. I don’t think Mel will like it.”  
“I looked it up and there’s a hospital less than thirty minutes away. Maybe she could have her transfusions there and I could take her into Boston to see Mel once a week or whatever. She needs normality. I can home school her, maybe even get her dance teacher to come and give her a private class.”  
“You’ve really thought this through, huh?”  
“There really isn’t much else to think about.”  
“I guess there’s no harm in asking.”  
She could see he was distracted. He alternated between spanning his fingers around her ankle and running his hand up and down her calf. “What are you thinking about?”  
He looked at her and she saw him come back from far away. “I’m thinking about the night I came to see you after I found out Faye was pregnant.”  
“And you walked through that storm like an idiot.”  
“I couldn’t get here fast enough.”  
“And yet you walked through that storm like an idiot instead of just, I don’t know, driving or getting a cab.” She pushed herself up so she could reach the whisky on the coffee table and took a sip.  
“Hey,” he admonished, taking the glass from her. “I offered you one and you said no.”  
“Dude, it’s my whisky!”  
“And I bought you these glasses!”  
Harvey swiped the glass from his hand and drained the contents before giving it back to him. “There. My whisky, your glass.”  
“Minx,” he muttered, getting up to refill his glass and pouring one for Harvey.  
She closed her eyes as the alcohol warmed her throat. “Why were you thinking about that night?”  
“I don’t know. I’ve just been running it all through my head, everything that’s brought us to this point. Incidentally, I tried to get a cab but nobody would come out in the storm.”  
“That should have been your first clue.” She opened one eye as he pressed a glass into her hand. She looked at it doubtfully. “I’m worried I’m using alcohol as an emotional crutch.”  
Chris sighed as he flumped back down beside her. “You’re not using alcohol as an emotional crutch, Harvey.”  
“Speaking of emotional crutches, when are you getting Dodger back?”  
“I’m not. I mean, I am, but Shanna’s going to look after him. I can’t leave him alone all day and half the night while I’m at the hospital every single day. It’s not fair on him.”  
“I bet he misses you.”  
“I miss him. Although I’ve got to admit you smell a lot better in the morning than he does.”  
“That’s subjective.” She took a sip of the whisky although she truly didn’t want it. It was just there. “I packed Belle’s baby album earlier. I just flipped open the front cover and I nearly had an emotional breakdown.”  
“That’s because you’re bottling everything up. I know you’re feeling a million and one emotions and you’re keeping them all inside because you think you have to be strong for Belle.”  
She blinked, surprised at his perceptiveness. “I’m fine.”  
“Fine is something you say when you think the implication that you’re not is some kind of criticism.”  
“The point is,” she said irritably, irked that he read her so well, “that I can’t go through the baby album with her. You should do it. She wants it because of you anyway, and you can spend some time alone with her. I’ve got stuff I need to do tomorrow.”  
“Like what?”  
“Like returning the hundreds of messages on my phone. Like going to see my boss and telling her I have to quit. Like calling my parents and telling them about Belle.”  
He passed a hand over his face then smoothed his beard, a gesture which she knew meant he was tired. “Yeah, I need to call my mom. If I don’t tell her about the diagnosis, she’ll put a hit out on me.”  
“If you take me to pick up my car in the morning, I can go in to see her, speak to Mel and then leave you to it.”  
“We have a meeting with the transplant team tomorrow.”  
“What time?”  
“Uh…two o’clock.”  
“I’ll make sure I’m back by then.”  
“I’ve been thinking about our wider social circle. Rumours are spreading like wildfire and I know you want to put everyone straight about the video and stuff. I thought that we could invite a few key individuals over to my place at the weekend.”  
She raised an eyebrow. “A party?”  
“No!” He looked genuinely offended. “Of course not. A gathering. I won’t even provide beers. We can ask them to be the point of contact for our other mutual friends. Then we’ll stick them in a group chat and keep them updated that way.”  
“God, an evening at your house with no beer. That’s when they’re really going to know something’s up.”  
“If you don’t want to then it’s fine, I just thought –”  
“I do want to. It’s a really good idea.”  
He gave her a small smile as he drained his whisky. “Leave it with me.”  
“Chris, earlier on…why did you shut down that woman when she spoke about Faye?”  
He sighed and shifted his weight slightly, moving her feet to rest more comfortably in his lap. “I don’t want Belle thinking that she has something else that she has to deal with. Faye doesn’t want to be contacted.”  
“Not even if Belle’s sick?”  
Chris shook his head. “She was very clear about the future during the adoption process. Her mind was made up, you know that. Faye won’t want to do it and it’s unfair to let Belle, or anyone else, think that path is open to us.”  
Harvey made to take another sip of the whisky but her stomach heaved so she put it down on the coffee table instead. “I’m going to make dinner.”  
His grip tightened on her ankle as she attempted to swing her legs off of his lap. “Wait. There’s something else.”  
“What?” He looked at her, his expression guarded. His leg jiggled beneath hers. “Chris, what is it? You’re making me anxious.”  
“Because I know you’re not going to like it. I don’t like it, but…”  
She could feel her heart fluttering in her chest as a vague air of unease settled over her. “Oh my god, what? Just say it.”  
“Megan thinks I should give an interview. A soft one, to get my side of the story across.”  
She frowned. “And?”  
“Well, you’ll be bound to come up and I’d have to talk about our friendship.”  
“I’d rather you didn’t.”  
“I know. And I don’t really want to do it. My reputation is currently the least of my concerns.”  
Harvey shrugged. “I see where she’s coming from. A nice sympathetic interview to talk about how tortured you were about your predicament and how I stepped up for my best friend and how you’ve loved Belle from behind the scenes. The ladies will be swooning again in no time. But you’re right. It’s unimportant. We need to protect Belle from all of this, not make her a bigger part of it.”  
“But,” he said, squeezing her ankle again as she tried to move, “what if I can raise awareness for this disease, and the bone marrow register? What if none of us is a match for Belle? Look at how many followers I have on Twitter. If just one percent of them went on to be donors it could make a massive, massive difference to thousands of people looking for transplants.”  
“Obviously that would be amazing.”  
“How about this; we continue to not respond to requests for comment and I’ll do what I can with my legal team to keep the media away from the hospital. If things haven’t calmed down in a week or two, we’ll talk about it again.”  
She nodded slowly. “Okay.”  
“What’s wrong?”  
“Nothing. I just really like the idea of thousands of bone marrow donors but abhor the thought of having you talk about our private life on national TV or whatever. And I really feel it’s more important for Belle to understand our actions before you even think about explaining them to your fans. I know you’ve still got movies to sell but—”  
“No, no,” he interrupted, “you’re right. I didn’t think about it like that.”  
Harvey cautiously tried to move her legs and when he didn’t grab her ankle again, she swung her feet to the floor. She picked up his empty glass and offered him her almost untouched drink, which he took from hand with a distracted smile.  
She was almost at the door when he said, “Is it hard? Being my friend?”  
She stood with her back to him for a moment to compose her expression, then she turned back to him. “Sometimes. I mean, other than a few stolen pictures and some idle gossip about who I am to you, your fame has never really impacted me before. But our…arrangement, keeping secrets, having to protect you as well as Belle and myself? That’s been hard.”  
Chris looked utterly dejected. “God, Harvey. I’m so sorry.”  
“Shit, no! That’s not what—” She stopped as he buried his face in his hands and his shoulders heaved. “Chris…”  
She crossed the room in two strides and pulled him into her arms, sinking back onto the couch beside him. Deep down she knew that she hadn’t upset him, that it was the sheer amount of stress he’d been under for the past few days, but that didn’t stop her adding it to the list of things she blamed herself for.  
“I’m so scared of losing her,” he choked out between sobs.  
“I know, sweetheart,” she said soothingly, wrapping as much of him in her arms as she could manage and rocking him gently as she would with Belle. His sobs tore at her heart and she couldn’t find any words of comfort except for a lame, “Everything’s going to be okay.”  
Harvey held him for a long time and let him cry. She felt as if she just closed her eyes for a second but when she opened them again, she was in her bed and the room was in darkness. Turning her head, she could make out Chris’s silhouette beside her. She moved closer to him, lifting his arm to curl up against his chest. He roused long enough for her to get comfortable but within seconds his slow, deep breaths of sleep whispered in her ear and the arm curled around her body slackened and grew heavy.  
Chris kicked out a lot of heat, like a radiator, but even cocooned in his arms with the quilt over her, she shivered. Her whole body ached and her stomach rumbled painfully. She ignored it all and stroked his arm as she cast her mind back over what she remembered of the evening. She envied him the release of crying, knowing, as much as it had pained him, he must have felt so much better and clear-headed afterwards.  
Her own tears seemed to be constantly just beneath the surface, out of reach. The sobs had been pushed down, compacted and compressed deep inside her and now they were buried and inaccessible. Like Chris, she was scared of losing Belle. Not only just to the illness but to the recurring notion that Lisa would take over or that Belle herself would want to live with Chris once she came to terms with her paternity. She was worried about the treatment Belle would have to endure, the uncertain days and weeks that stretched ahead of them, waiting to find out if any one of them could be her donor. She felt angry, not with Chris but with the situation they found themselves in thanks to his fame. It would be difficult enough to get through it all even without covert videos and photographs circulating the internet. And she felt guilt for, well, everything. She knew all of those emotions and more were present, even if she couldn’t feel them like she should. More than anything, she realised, she felt like a heartless bitch as she lay there, dry-eyed and emotionless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all. Sorry for the brief hiatus, I'm dealing with real life in quite a big way right now. However, I am constantly working on this story and will get parts out as and when they come. I just can't promise regular weekly updates. Thank you to everyone who's sticking with this and for all of your comments. I means the world and has really lifted my spirits when I felt like just deleting my account! MM x


	11. Chapter 11

“Are you okay?”  
Harvey, creeping back into the bedroom from the bathroom, gasped softly. She hadn’t expected him to be awake. “I’m fine.”  
Chris pushed himself up on one elbow to look at her. “Yeah, heaving your guts up to the extent that you wake a notoriously deep sleeper in the next room is pretty much the definition of fine.”  
“If you woke up just to sass me then you can go right back to sleep.” Wearily, feeling three times her age, she climbed up on the bed and collapsed onto the pillows.  
He sat up beside her, looking at her face in the barely-there light of dawn. “You look terrible.”  
“So you keep saying. I must have eaten something that disagreed with me.”  
“You haven’t eaten anything at all. I carried you up to bed after you fell asleep on me. You didn’t make it as far as dinner.”  
“That was probably the whisky on an empty stomach.”  
“Or,” he said, in a tone that told her that she wouldn’t like what he was about to say, “it’s stress and exhaustion.”  
“Maybe it is, but what do you want me to do about it? Stop being stressed? I can’t just switch it off!”  
“Talk about it. You haven’t once told me how you’re feeling.”  
She frowned, thinking back. “Haven’t I?”  
“No.”  
“I’m pretty sure I have.”  
“I’m pretty sure you haven’t.”  
“Well, right now I feel like I’ve been heaving my guts up and the person who is supposed to be my best friend is making me feel bad about it.”  
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not making you feel bad, you’re trying to make me feel bad so I stop talking to you about talking about your emotions.”  
“Sometimes, I really hate you.”  
“Good, good! Tell me what else you’re feeling.”  
With a sigh of exasperation, she got out of bed. “You’ve made me feel sick again. I hope you’re happy.”  
She stalked into the bathroom with his chuckles ringing in her ears. He could be so infuriating at times. Woozy, she leaned against the sink, raising her head to look at herself in the mirror. Chris had been right, she did look terrible. She had dark circles beneath her eyes and her complexion had a pallid, greenish tinge. It stood to reason that she looked like shit when she felt like it, too. Salty saliva rose in her mouth and she spat into the sink, trying to stave off the rising nausea. Her body decided that, despite her empty stomach, it had found something for her to throw up and she turned to the toilet just in time to deposit a stomachful of bile into its depths.  
Spitting out the bitter taste, she reached for a wad of toilet paper to wipe her mouth as she flushed the toilet. Eyes streaming, she leaned on the sink again. As she looked in the mirror, Chris’s reflection appeared in the doorway behind her, a deep frown creasing his brow. “Harvey…”  
“Please don’t…” she murmured, reaching for her toothbrush.  
“I don’t know how many other ways there are for me to tell you that I’m worried about you before you’ll get it.”  
“I get it. I’ll…I don’t know, I’ll go to the doctor or something.”  
He shook his head, leaning against the door frame as he watched her scrub her teeth. “I know this is hard for you.”  
“Chris, for the love of god, stop poking me. Just stop!” She slammed her toothbrush onto the counter and yanked a towel off of the rail as she rounded on him, wiping it roughly across her mouth. “I know I’ve got a problem, okay? You constantly nagging me isn’t helping me feel less stressed or exhausted!”  
They glared at each other in the mirror for a minute, then Chris caved first, moving to stand behind her and wrapping her in his arms. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”  
“Get off me. I’m all sweaty and I smell of vomit.”  
“I don’t care.”  
She sighed, resigned, looking at him in the mirror. “You’re a pain in my ass, Evans.”  
He smiled proudly, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Why don’t you stay home today? I’ll tell Belle you’re sick. You can stay in bed and return all your calls.”  
“I want to talk to Mel…”  
“Call her.”  
“We have the meeting with the transplant team.”  
“I’ll reschedule.” His arms tightened around her, making her wince. “Sorry! What did I do?”  
“I’m just a bit tender. It’s okay.”  
“And you can call your doctor.”  
She knew the only way to get him off her back was to agree. “Okay, but I want you to take me to get my car.”  
He shook his head. “I’ll take a cab home and drive your car back.”  
“Fine.”  
“Let me run you a bath and make you some breakfast.”  
She nodded, letting herself relax against him for a moment. “Thank you.”  
“Don’t mention it. Go get undressed while I get your bath ready.”  
Harvey took her robe from the back of the door before going into the bedroom to strip off her sweaty clothes. Every movement seemed to take so much effort and, by the time Chris emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of lavender-scented steam, she was lying face down on the bed.  
“Your bath is ready.”  
She could only manage a grunt as she feebly tried to push herself up from the bed. Chris watched her struggle for a moment, no doubt entertained by her pointless flailing, before taking pity on her and hauling her to her feet. “Thanks.”  
The bath was hot and foamy. Perfect. She lowered herself into the water and closed her eyes, feeling her tired and aching muscles begin to relax almost immediately. Chris might be a lot of deeply irritating things but he knew the value of self-care. She didn’t know how long she stayed submerged in the bubbles, her mind blissfully blank for once, but by the time she was ready to get out, her fingers and toes had pruned.  
She emptied the bathwater then leaned over the side to wash her hair, treating herself to two shampoos and her most expensive conditioner. Afterwards, she wrapped her hair in a towel and herself in her robe and went back into the bedroom where she found a tray on the bed with a bowl of oatmeal, on which Chris had made a smiley face out of sliced banana, a glass of orange juice and a note telling her he’d gone to pick up her car and would be back soon.  
She smiled. The oatmeal was still warm and he’d used brown sugar, just the way she liked it. She made a mental note to try not to take things out on him. His suffering was no less than hers and it wasn’t his fault she couldn’t adequately deal with hers.  
Once she’d scraped the bowl clean and drained the last of the juice, she blow-dried her hair and dressed in sweats and a t-shirt. She looked and felt a lot better. Her plans for the day didn’t extend far from her bed but she needed her phone and her laptop, so she carried the tray downstairs, arriving in the hallway just as Chris pushed open the front door.  
He looked surprised to see her and there was something in his eyes that she didn’t recognise as he looked her over. “Hey. How are you feeling?”  
“Better. Thanks for breakfast.”  
“You’re welcome.” He gently took the tray from her hands and set it down on the sideboard. “Um…come and sit down a minute.”  
She knew that tone, the hesitation in his voice. She followed him into the living room and sat on the couch. “What’s happened?”  
“There’s a photographer outside.”  
“Outside here?”  
“Yeah.”  
Harvey buried her face in her hands for a second. Why did nothing last? For the first time in days, she had felt free. Clear-headed, even. She actually wanted to face the day for once.  
“His car is parked just down the street but I saw him as I pulled into the drive.”  
“You’re sure?”  
Chris nodded, lifting a hand to gently rub her back. “I’m so sorry about all of this.”  
“It’s not your fault. You might be famous but that doesn’t give people free rein to try to photograph you everywhere you go.”  
He shrugged helplessly. “We can go to my place if you want?”  
His place was further back from the road, gated and much more private. Even if someone stood on the road at the end of her drive, they’d still easily be able to see through the front windows. Privacy from paparazzi hadn’t been on the top of her list when she’d bought the house. “Sure.”  
“It’s just that I don’t want to be apart from you at the moment. Not only because of the press roaming around but because of everything that’s going on with Belle…”  
Her heart thudded dully as a general air of disappointment settled over her. “Okay.”  
“Harvs…”  
“What?”  
He looked at her, his blue eyes flicking over her face. She thought she sensed disappointment from him, too. He shook his head. “Nothing. Just that they’ll probably only hang around for a couple of days if they know you’re not here.”  
She nodded and went to pack her bag but her mind dwelled on what it was that he hadn’t said for the rest of the day.  
  
Once she’d packed a bag and locked up the house, closing all of the curtains and blinds as she went, she followed him back to his house in her car. She caught sight of the photographer as she pulled out of the drive, catching him off-guard as he scrambled to photograph Chris’s car. Chris had made her don the hat and sunglasses disguise and she’d pulled up her hood. She obsessively checked her rear-view mirror the whole way to Chris’s but nobody followed them as far as she could tell.  
“I should have stopped for groceries,” he bemoaned as they walked into the kitchen. “I don’t have anything here.”  
“Chris, I’m not bedridden. I can go to the store.” She put her bag down on one of the chairs and her purse on the table.  
“You’re supposed to be relaxing.”  
She shrugged and changed the subject. “Tell Belle I packed her comforter, just in case she wants it. I thought she’d want to have more of her things around her. I put a few books in there too but she’s probably taking advantage of having no parental supervision to be on her iPad all day long.”  
To deter him from further conversation, she busied herself with unpacking her laptop and setting herself up for a day on his sofa. When she went into the kitchen to retrieve her purse, Chris was lying in wait for her.  
“You’re pissed off.”  
“I’m not,” she sighed, remembering her pact to not take things out on him. She went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. “I feel so much better that I feel like I should come in and see Belle with you. And I feel really shitty because I don’t want to. I want to stay here and do all of the things I need to do.”  
Chris enveloped her in his arms. “And that’s okay.”  
“After not seeing her all weekend I feel as if I should be there twenty-four seven. I feel like the only mom who walks out of the hospital at the end of the day and goes home to their own bed. But I have to start chipping away at the million and one things I need to do.”  
“Harvey,” he admonished quietly, “just shush. You don’t have to justify yourself to me. It’s not as if she’s alone. She’s got her grandparents and her aunts and uncle. You don’t need to be there all the time.”  
“I feel as if I should be.”  
“And you physically can’t.” He gently eased her away, cradling her face in his hands. “You can’t let your life just crumble while you sit in a hospital room. There are things you need to do and Belle knows that. She’ll have me for today and you’ll be back in to see her tomorrow. It’s no big deal.”  
Harvey took a moment to enjoy the hug, to breathe in his familiar smell and quiet her mind. “I’m sorry I fell asleep on you last night. You needed me and I just…passed out.”  
A laugh rumbled through his chest. “I’ll let you into a secret; I fell asleep, too.”  
  
Once Chris left for the hospital, Harvey settled on the couch with her phone and laptop. She planned to spend the morning making calls and then go out to run errands in the afternoon. She’d made a rough list of people she needed to call and started out with the school principal. Taking a deep breath, she picked up the phone and opened her contacts.  
Two hours later, she’d made heavy inroads into the list. The school said they would email work for her to do every week. Everyone she’d spoken to had been sympathetic and understanding. Belle’s friends’ parents mostly wanted to know if there was anything they could do or if they could visit. Her ballet teacher said she’d be more than happy to go to the hospital once a week and give Belle a small class, even before Harvey could ask her.  
She was just checking the time to work out if Mel would be finished with her rounds yet when the phone rang with the hospital’s number onscreen. “Hi, Mel, I was just about to call you.”  
“I had a feeling. I saw your partner in crime just now and he said you’d been unwell. I wanted to check up on you.”  
“I think I had a stomach bug or something. I’m perfectly okay now.” Then, after a pause in which Harvey could hear her scepticism, “Really. I’m fine.”  
“Are you eating?”  
“I had oatmeal for breakfast.”  
“Sleeping?”  
She thought about laying in Chris’s arms all night, watching the numbers on her alarm clock tick over until the sun, and her nausea, rose. “A bit.”   
“I’ve told you this before, it’s important for you to look after yourself, too. I’ve seen mothers literally worry themselves sick. I know the signs.”  
“The next call on my list is to my doctor.”  
“A wise decision. In the meantime, I can write you a prescription for some sleeping tablets, just for a couple of nights to help you get back into a routine. I’ll give it Chris for you.”  
“Thank you.”  
“No problem. They’re pretty strong, so no driving the next day and don’t take them with alcohol. Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”  
“No,” Harvey said automatically.  
“Eat a decent meal and drink plenty of water. I expect to see you looking rested when you next come in.”  
“I’ll try. Actually, I had something I wanted to ask you. Belle’s birthday is coming up, then obviously Christmas and I know she’s really upset that she might have to spend them in the hospital. I know you want to keep her isolated and I had an idea. My parents have a beach house on the Cape. It’s fairly isolated anyway but at this time of year there’s nobody there.”  
“I don’t know, the Cape’s almost a three-hour drive. Ideally, I wouldn’t want her more than a forty-minutes away.”  
“I get that. There’s a hospital about twenty minutes away. Couldn’t I take her there if she needs anything?”  
Mel was quiet for a moment. “If I can arrange a contact for you at the local hospital, I’ll consider discharging her from the nineteenth to the twenty-sixth. If anything at all happens in that time, if she gets sick, if she bleeds, if she gets so much as a low-grade fever, you must take her to a hospital immediately.”  
“I will. Of course, I will.”  
“Okay. Well, leave it with me for a day or two. I’ll make some calls and try to arrange something. I’ll let you know my final decision.”  
“Thank you,” Harvey said with a smile. A week wasn’t exactly what she hoped for but perhaps if Belle continued to do well, Mel might consider discharging her again for longer.  
When she hung up with Mel, she immediately dialled her doctor’s office and made the first available appointment, which was just over a week away. Harvey crossed the call from her list and moved on to the next one, which she wasn't particularly looking forward to; her parents.  
She hadn’t spoken to them since the evening she’d told them the truth about Belle. They hadn’t called or left messages for her. It wasn’t unusual for her not to speak to them for days, sometimes weeks, but she would have thought that they’d make a bit more effort with their granddaughter in hospital.  
To her immense relief, her father answered and they made small talk for a minute or two until he asked how Belle was. “She’s doing well. That’s one of the reasons I called, actually. We got a diagnosis through yesterday. She’s got something called aplastic anemia.”  
“So, not cancer, then?”  
“No, Daddy. Not cancer.”  
“Well, that’s a relief.”  
“Yes, and no. Aplastic anemia is basically bone marrow failure. Belle’s going to need a transplant.”  
“Oh. And I suppose we’re no good to her?”  
“It’s unlikely but we have just as much chance of being a match as any other non-blood relation. I can arrange for you and Mom to be tested, if you’d like?”  
“Of course, of course. I think we’ll pop in and see the little munchkin later, if that’s convenient?”  
“Sure. Chris is there with her but he won’t mind. They’ll probably only be watching Beauty and The Beast on repeat.”  
“Was there anything else?”  
“Yes. There’s a chance the doctor might discharge Belle over Christmas but she needs to be somewhere isolated. I wondered if I could use the beach house?”  
“Not a problem. In fact, I’ll give the keys to Chris later. Keep it as long as you need. I won’t be able to drag your mother down there until May at the earliest anyway.”  
“Thank you, Daddy.”  
“How about you? Are you looking after yourself?”  
“Yes, I’m fine.”  
“Hmmm. Well, hopefully, we’ll see you soon. Let me know if there’s anything we can do.”  
Harvey said goodbye and hung up, immediately sending Chris a heads up that her parents would be visiting and that they’d give him the keys. His response read, ‘I knew you were pissed off with me’, which made her giggle.  
Final call. She scrolled through her phone until her boss’s name came up on the screen. There was no way she could continue to work. Even if Belle wasn’t in the hospital, she couldn’t hope to concentrate on her job. The big wedding she’d been in the middle of organising would now be given to the colleague who had been assisting her, Maria, who was more than capable of handling the whole thing and would probably be promoted into Harvey’s vacant position.  
The conversation was short and sweet. They didn’t require her to work out her notice but if she could put it in writing and make time to go in for a handover meeting, they’d really appreciate it. And, just like that, she was out of a job.  
Balancing her phone on the arm of the sofa, she sat and stared absently at it for a minute. For some reason, Guy sprang to mind. He seemed to represent a lot that was out of reach to her, both professionally and personally. She was still unsure if she should see him again or not. It didn’t seem fair to let him think that anything could happen between them. There was too much going on and, however much she might wish he didn’t, Chris dominated her heart. She wasn’t sure there was room for anyone else.  
She allowed Chris far too much headspace, she knew that, but she had come to realise that he, in turn, leaned into the domesticity she offered, the ready-made family unit, which could well be the reason why he hadn’t yet settled down. At this stage she was his girlfriend in all but name, a situation that made her both furious and ecstatic.  
The problem was that she had no access to the usual coping mechanisms used to get over someone. She could hardly stop seeing him. The little control she had would be to stop sleeping with him and, as much as she knew that was something she should do, she didn’t want to. It felt disingenuous to continue pretending that it was just sex and it didn’t mean anything but the alternative was something she didn’t even want to contemplate, let alone live with.  
Her only way out was to find someone who reciprocated her feelings rather than being oblivious to them. Unfortunately, that plan had a major drawback; finding someone else whom she could have feelings for. Chris was an incredibly unique individual and her love for him had grown slowly from a strong and deep friendship. Its roots were tangled in his kindness and generosity, his intelligence, his playfulness, even his tendency to be infuriating. And he made her laugh. She smiled to herself. God, some of the dumb shit they’d laughed about that wouldn’t be funny with anyone but him.  
It would take quite a man to even begin to fill his shoes, a realisation that terrified her. She didn’t want to spend her life pining for him. To spend time with him that meant more to her than it did to him. To be constantly afraid that the next woman he met would be the one.   
Closing her eyes, she tuned into the silence around her and took a few deep breaths. She certainly felt a lot calmer than she had earlier in the morning but something had brought back that vague sense of uneasiness.  
She rubbed her stomach absently as she wandered into Chris’s kitchen and explored the fridge and cupboards. He hadn’t been wrong when he said didn’t have anything. How he maintained his physique with takeout and beer, she would never know. She poured herself a glass of water and started writing a shopping list.  
  
“Harvey?”  
She blinked her eyes open. It was dark and Chris crouched in front of her, gently shaking her awake. “Huh?”  
“You must have crashed out. I’ve been calling you all afternoon.”  
Confused, she tried to sit up. She was on the couch, half sitting, half lying, and her back ached from the awkward position. “What time is it?”  
“Almost eight o’clock.”  
“Shit.” She rubbed her eyes. “I just came in to sit down for a minute. That was like five hours ago.”  
She held out her hand and Chris pulled her up. “You obviously needed it.”  
“I was going to cook you an amazing dinner and tell you what a productive day I’d had and how much better I feel.”  
“We can cook dinner together, if you want, and you can tell me all about your day.”  
“But now it’s not a surprise.” She followed him into the kitchen. “How was your day? How’s Belle?”  
“They gave her another red cell transfusion today. She really perks up afterwards. She was a little guarded with me at first but we went through the baby album and I told her stories about all of the pictures and she seemed almost back to normal.”  
Harvey smiled, opening the refrigerator door to take out the steaks. “That’s great. I knew she’d come around.”  
“I don’t think we’re quite there yet but she’s receptive. Harvey…where did all of these groceries come from?”  
“…the store?”  
“And how did they get from the store to here?” He walked slowly towards her as he spoke.  
She turned back to the fridge and took out a beer. “In the back of my car?”  
“In the back of your car.” He took the beer she proffered but put it on the counter and continued advancing towards her. “You were supposed to spend the day relaxing.”  
“I slept on the couch for five hours, Chris.” Her back was against the fridge.  
“And why did you sleep on the couch for five hours? Because you went out and bought about a thousand bucks worth of groceries!”  
“In my defence,” she said, trying not to smile, “I was left unsupervised.”  
He stood in front of her, blue eyes locked on hers. She willed him to kiss her. “I feel sorry for whoever you end up with. He is going to have his work cut out.”  
The kiss he landed on her forehead was decidedly brotherly. Harvey’s knees shook, not from desire, but humiliation. Her mood, which had been so unusually buoyant, plummeted. The implication was clear; whoever it was, it most certainly wouldn’t be him.


	12. Chapter 12

The next few days were some of the hardest Harvey had ever endured. Trying to keep it together for Belle, trying not to give in to her broken heart, trying to pretend to Chris that he hadn’t hurt her more comprehensively than anyone in her life ever before. She knew it was only a matter of time before something happened to push her over the edge.  
On Friday, just a week after Belle had gone into hospital, a week which felt like several months, Mel walked into Belle’s room, holding a sheet of paper out to Harvey saying only, “Here you go. Merry Christmas,” before breezing back out. On it were the contact details for a doctor at Cape Cod Hospital. Belle and Chris were beside themselves. Harvey tried to join in and be happy, it was what she had wanted, after all. But she felt so tired, so completely drained, that the prospect just seemed like unnecessary hard work.  
Later that night, Harvey sat alone in the kitchen, writing a list of all the things she needed to do. She’d been thinking up ideas and plans for giving Belle the best possible birthday and Christmas experience and now she had to choose which felt actually doable.  
“Are you coming to bed?” Chris asked, appearing in the doorway.  
She glanced up at him and shook her head. “Too much to do.”  
He walked behind her, reading the list over her shoulder. “Sweetheart, you can’t possibly manage even half of that.”  
“I want to. Belle deserves it.”  
“Yes, she does, but…” He pulled a chair around to sit beside her but with his back to the table. “This is a lot.”  
She looked at him, something she’d been trying not to do for the past few days. She avoided eye contact with him at every opportunity. “I’ll do as much as I can. I’ll…I don’t know, I’ll drive down there every day after visiting Belle.”  
Chris shook his head, laying a hand gently on hers, stilling her pen. “You’re already exhausted, how are you going to do that?”  
“I have until Wednesday. That gives me four clear days.”  
“Okay, stop saying ‘me’ when this is a ‘we’ thing. Also, I have an idea.”  
“What?”  
“Why don’t we go down there tomorrow? Together. We can put up some Christmas decorations and stock up on all of Belle’s favourite foods and get everything ready for her.”  
“What about Belle?”  
“She’s got a backlog of people waiting to visit her, she won’t be alone. And we can Facetime her. She’ll understand that you’re just trying to make things special for her.”  
“I feel like I’m spending less time with her now I don’t have a job than I did when I was working. There’s always something to keep me away from her recently.”  
Chris put his hand on the back of her neck, withdrawing it when she flinched away. His frown deepened. “Har—”  
“Nothing is wrong,” she snapped. “So don’t ask.”  
He held his hands up in surrender and leaned back in the chair. “Okay.”  
“Other mothers keep a constant vigil by their child’s side. They sleep in those damn chairs, too scared to move in case something happens to their baby. I leave every night, I come home, I eat and drink and act like there’s nothing wrong. I am literally phoning it in.”  
“Other mothers have travelled hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles for their child to be treated here. They don’t have access to their support network of friends and family like we do. Almost every single person Belle knows lives within an hour of that hospital. People are only too happy to be there to give you a break.”  
“A break from what? From being an abject failure as a mother?”  
Her words seemed to sting Chris as if she’d insulted him. His neck went red and, when he spoke, she could hear the effort it took to keep his voice level. “You’re not a failure.”  
A heavy silence fell between them. “I’m just so tired, Chris.”  
“I’ve still got those sleeping pills Mel gave you. Why don’t you take one and come to bed?”  
She shook her head. “I can’t. I…I need a clear head for tomorrow.”  
He raked his fingertips over his beard as he looked at her. “Please come to bed.”  
It was no good. Even heartbroken and angry, she couldn’t refuse him. They turned off the lights and went upstairs. Harvey climbed into bed and waited for Chris to come out of the bathroom. For the past couple of nights, she forced herself to stay up after he went to bed and ‘accidentally’ crashed out on the couch. When he got in beside her, he held his arm out for her, drawing her into the warmth of his body.  
“I’ve missed you.”  
Harvey didn’t say anything. She was too afraid of what would come out of her mouth if she spoke. She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. His hand stroked her back in a soothing kind of way. Sleep came for her quickly and she knew, despite everything, it was because she was in the place where she felt happiest and safest.  
  
Harvey woke to find Chris’s side of the bed empty. From somewhere deep in the house, she heard a clatter and a muffled curse and curiosity drove her out of bed to investigate.  
She found him up in the attic, already dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, buried behind a stack of boxes. “What on earth are you doing?”  
“I’m looking for my spare Christmas decorations. I thought we could take them with us to decorate the house.”  
Harvey shook her head. Chris took Christmas incredibly seriously and she didn’t think she’d ever seen the same decoration twice. To say he had spare decorations would be an understatement. “Chris, you don’t have to do this.”  
“I’ve already done it,” he said, pulling down a box stacked near the ceiling. It was labelled ‘4 of 7’. “I’ve already packed, too.”  
“Wow. You have been busy.”  
He picked up a stack of three boxes and lifted them almost over his head to put them back. She tried to ignore both the muscles in his arms and the way his t-shirt rode up just a little to show a band of flesh above his jeans. “I thought we’d drop in on Belle on the way.”  
She nodded, peeking into a box with a label that read ‘Assorted Reindeer’. “I need to go home first.”  
“Yeah, I figured. I’m ridiculously excited to spend Christmas with you and Belle.”  
“You are?”  
“You seem surprised.”  
“I assumed you’d be spending it with your family.”  
“I will be…” He frowned, giving her a sideways look. “Unless you don’t want me there?”  
“Don’t be stupid,” she muttered, turning to go back downstairs. Truth be told, she had been looking forward to having a break from him and the chance to try to get her head straight. He’d never been able to openly have Christmas with Belle. He’d dropped in on Christmas Day for a quick hello and presents a few times, and they’d spent it with his family in the past, but there was always the pretence, the limits on his behaviour. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to go all out for the first time, even if it meant that she would be the one pretending and limiting her behaviour.  
  
Some of Harvey’s best memories were of the time her family spent at Cape Cod, but not in any sense of being one big happy family. Quite the reverse. Her mom would disappear to play bridge and drink wine with the other bored moms, her dad would hit the golf course and her sister would wait for their parents to leave the house, raid their father’s liquor cabinet and head into town in search of trouble. Leaving Harvey endless hours to explore the beaches, dig for clams, and find hidden nooks in which to lie on a blanket and read until the sun dipped below the horizon.  
She had never been there during the winter though and was immediately shocked by the freezing Atlantic wind that took her breath away as she climbed out of the warmth of her car.  
“I think you’re going to have to rethink your beach walks.” Chris climbed out of his car, raising his voice to be heard over the wind. “At least it’s deserted.”  
“Because nobody in their right mind would come here in this weather! Let me turn off the alarm and then we can park in the garage and unload from there.”  
It wasn’t any warmer inside than outside. She headed for the laundry room where the boiler controls were and, with the carefree abandon of one who didn’t have to pay the gas bill, turned the heat on and up. They unloaded the cars, unpacked the groceries and, finally, took their bags upstairs.  
Harvey’s bedroom had been, like the rest of the house, redecorated and furnished and now looked to be a guest room, with no trace of her at all. She stood by the door, unsure how she felt about it. Her mother had done the same to her bedroom at home as soon as she’d moved out. It never failed to baffle her that her mother had chosen to teach when she seemed to hate motherhood and her own children so much.  
By the time they’d unpacked and made up the bed, the house had warmed up considerably. They went downstairs and Chris made her some tea while she stood at the kitchen sink and looked out at the dark clouds rolling across the ocean. It was only three in the afternoon but already the sky had darkened and she could see the light from the lighthouse a mile or so down the coast lighting up the low clouds.  
He put a mug down in front of her. “I’m going to head over to that Christmas tree place we saw on the way.”  
She wrapped her hands around the mug, appreciating the warmth. “Do you want me to come with you?”  
He shook his head, bending to kiss her forehead. “You stay in the warm. I won’t be long.”  
She sighed as he left the room, waiting until she was sure he’d gone, then waiting another few minutes just to be absolutely certain that he hadn’t forgotten his phone or his wallet. Then she pulled her bag toward her and took out the pregnancy test she’d been carrying around for the past couple of days.   
  
Because they wouldn’t be able to throw Belle a proper birthday party, Harvey had the idea of getting a message from each of her friends and sticking them on the wall with a picture of them and Belle. While she sent texts and emails asking for messages and going through the thousands of photos on her laptop, Chris chose the optimal spot for the tree and began sorting through his boxes of decorations. Christmas songs played in the background. It was the height of domesticity.  
Harvey tried to relax and enjoy the atmosphere but her mind refused to forget about the pregnancy test. Three days ago, while throwing up in the bathroom, she had realised that there might be another reason for her daily bouts of vomiting. A check of her diary told her she was two weeks late. Two weeks. That was pretty major, even by her body’s erratic standards.  
They initially had strict rules about having sex and one of them was that they were always safe. But then they got lazy. The condoms were upstairs and they were downstairs. They forgot in the heat of the moment. They’d had too much to drink. She was on the pill. It just felt better. Like many of the other rules they used to have, it had fallen by the wayside and, like many of the issues which had cropped up, they never talked about it.  
Although being on the pill had been an excellent backup, it had stopped agreeing with Harvey a few months back. She’d been bloated and emotional and her doctor had taken her off them immediately. She’d felt better within a couple of weeks although she hadn’t yet got around to finding something to replace it. Her period had been irregular ever since but two weeks…  
It was the worst possible time with everything happening with Belle. Her relationship with Chris seemed to be on increasingly shaky ground and she didn’t know how to fix it. She had no job. She’d all but given up hope of ever going back to Harvard for her MBA and to find out she was pregnant really would be the final nail in that coffin. So, the test stayed in her bag and she didn’t have to process how she really felt about having Chris’s baby.  
  
Harvey cooked dinner and they ate in front of the TV, a completely normal event for the two of them but she felt on edge and she didn’t know why. She felt trapped in the infinite split-second of waiting for her fight or flight to engage. She took their dishes to the kitchen and heard Chris’s phone ring and she wanted to run. She wanted to wrench open the back door and run as far away as she could.  
Confused as to what could be causing this reaction, she went back into the living room.  
“She’s right here, sweet pea, you want to say hi?” Chris propped his phone on the coffee table as Harvey cautiously sat back beside him, looking at Belle’s excited face on the screen.  
“Hi, Mommy!”  
“Hey, muffin. How was your day?”  
“It was good. Lisa came to see me, she bought me a new pair of tap shoes!” Belle turned the phone around and Harvey and Chris both laughed to see her wearing the shoes with her pyjamas. “She said that she’s going to see about changing my last name to Evans. And she said she’s making me a special bedroom at her house and she said that I can spend as much time there as I want when I’m not at Chris’s.”  
Harvey felt as if she’d been plunged into ice-cold water. She was vaguely aware of Chris gripping her arm tightly. He said something to Belle, something Harvey didn’t hear, and he ended the call. The silence was terrible. She snatched her wrist from his grasp and got up, consumed by something fierce and hot that wouldn’t be pushed down with all of her other emotions. Something she couldn’t hope to control. She paced up and down in front of the windows, breathing hard, every inch of her body trembling. With a howl of rage, she picked up her laptop and hurled it at the wall. It took out a chunk of plaster as it fell to the floor in a shower of plastic and components.  
“Jesus, Harvey!”  
“Just fuck off!” she screamed. She knew she shouldn’t say anymore but she couldn’t stop the seething resentment she felt for a moment longer. “I have given up everything for you. My career, my studies, every chance at my own happiness, everything. I raised her, she’s just as much mine as she is yours. Now your mother thinks she can swoop in and say ‘we’ll take it from here’? Well, fuck you, Evans, and fuck your mom and your entire fucking family!”  
“Harvey,” he said, his voice incredibly quiet after her screaming tirade, “you need to calm down.”  
“Don’t tell me to calm down! This is why you wanted to bring me here, so your mom could talk to Belle without me. You’re trying to keep me away from her!”  
“You’re acting like this is some big conspiracy.” His voice was so calm, as if they were having a rational conversation. “She’s excited to have another grandchild, she’s getting carried away. All I can do is apologise and promise you that I’m going to talk to her. I’d never let anyone take Belle from you. Not now, not ever.”  
“Why not? I’m obviously fucking useless.”  
“Why would you say that?! There is nothing you haven’t done for her.”  
“I didn’t know she was sick though, did I?”  
“How many more times do we have to go over this? Nobody knew she was sick. It’s not like everyone told you she was sick and you ignored them!”  
“I’m not a real mom. A real mom would have known,” she rambled, giving in to all of the insidious thoughts she’d had in the past week. “I can’t help her. I’m nothing. You should never have let me adopt her in the first place.”  
Chris was on her so fast that she barely had time to register his movement. He grabbed her shoulders, his fingers digging painfully into her tense muscles as he shook her. “Harvey, that’s enough! Stop it. Stop right now.”  
“You hate me because I betrayed you and you’re going to take her.”  
He looked both shocked and appalled. Tears welled rapidly in his eyes. “Sweetheart… I don’t…”  
“And she wants to go. She’d rather be with her family. She already told me I’m not her mom.”  
Chris’s anguish was painted on his face. “No…”  
Her heart felt like a lump of lead. She couldn’t bear to look at him. She needed to get away. Her car keys lay on the table. She snatched them up and started towards the front door.  
“Harvey! No!” His arms closed around her, pulling her back against his chest.  
“Let me go! Get off me!”  
She beat and scratched at his arms but he held her tightly, his mouth close to her ear as he murmured, “It’s okay. I’ve got you. Just let go.”  
Finally, _finally_, hot tears poured from her eyes and she wept and cried and struggled in his arms, her howls ripping and tearing at her throat as they escaped. He didn’t let her go, not even for a second. When she collapsed to her knees, he let her down gently, kneeling down beside her to pull her back into his arms, holding her while she cried huge wailing sobs that seemed as if they’d never stop.  
Harvey couldn’t think. She couldn’t feel anything. She had no idea of where she was, only vaguely aware of Chris’s arms around her, his tears falling into her hair and his voice in her ear. She didn’t know how much time passed. All she could do was cry. She cried and cried until there was nothing left.


	13. Chapter 13

Blinking her eyes open, Harvey stayed very still, listening to the roaring and the crashing that had broken into her sleep. It took her a moment to identify the sounds as the wind and the ocean, to remember she was at the beach house. The shutters were closed but she could see it was daytime. The last thing she remembered it had been dark, after dinner.  
Her head and limbs felt heavy, like she was moving through molasses, and her throat felt sore when she swallowed. She rubbed her forehead, pushing her hands into her hair, which was a sweaty, tangled mess. Climbing out of bed, she stumbled to her feet, shivering in the middle of the room in just a t-shirt and her underwear. Something didn’t feel right. She reached for one of Chris’s hoodies and pulled it over her head, then headed downstairs.  
There was no sign of Chris anywhere. She stood in the kitchen and for an awful moment, she thought he’d left her. Panicked, she looked around, finding his keys on the counter and his bag on the chair. She took a deep breath. She needed water. Her throat felt raw. She took a glass from the cupboard, filled it from the tap and drained it. She repeated the process three times before she felt she’d even taken the edge off of her thirst.  
A movement outside caught her eye and she looked up to see him out on the beach. He had his phone in one hand and was gesticulating wildly with the other as he spoke. He didn’t seem very happy. Harvey absently rubbed her stomach as she watched him. She wondered if he would be angry with her.  
Still trying to piece together the previous night, she wandered into the living room. The first thing she saw was the gash on the wall and remembered throwing her laptop. She looked around but could find no trace of it. She guessed Chris must have cleared it up. She’d have to call someone to come in and fix the wall or her mother would have a conniption.  
Chris came back inside, the cold air clinging to his clothes. He paused in the doorway, his eyes on her as she stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped around herself. “Hey. I was about to come and wake you. How are you feeling?”  
“Like I’ve been drinking tequila for a week,” she said hoarsely. “How long have I been asleep?”  
“About fourteen hours.”  
“_Fourteen_ hours? One four?”  
He nodded. “I gave you a couple of those sleeping pills.”  
She closed her eyes, silently cursing. “Why?”  
“Because you needed the rest. It’s not like I stirred them into your drink. I asked you if you wanted them and you said yes.”  
She didn’t remember anything much after throwing her laptop at the wall. She’d behaved abysmally. “I’m so sorry.”  
“Don’t apologise. Ever.” He held his arms out for her and, after a moment’s hesitation, she went to him. He smelled of salt and sand. “You needed to get that shit out. I can’t believe some of the crap you’ve had going on in your head.”  
“Chris…” She wanted to tell him everything, to clear the air completely. But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.  
“It’s okay,” he soothed, rubbing her back. “Do you at least feel better?”  
She looked up into his face. “It’s hard to tell with this elephant tranquiliser hangover.”  
He laughed, taking her face in his hands and smoothing his thumbs over her cheeks. “I meant what I said, Harvey. Nobody is taking Belle.”  
“She was so excited about being an Evans and living with you and your mom…”  
Chris pulled away slightly, frowning down at her. “No, she wasn’t.”  
“Yes, she was.”  
“No,” he insisted. “She was apprehensive. She was looking for reassurance.”  
Harvey frowned, trying to recall exactly what had happened. The sleeping tablets had given her a hangover to rival the brain fog she’d been experiencing for the past week. “Are-are you sure?”  
“I promise, Harvs. She wasn’t excited. She was excited about the shoes and then her tone completely changed. Maybe you just didn’t register it.”  
“Maybe…” She couldn’t remember. Had she really overreacted on a misunderstanding? She was sure Chris would argue that she’d needed to cry so it didn’t matter what set her off. Her concern was that she’d seen something that apparently hadn’t been there.  
“Are you sure you’re okay?”  
“Yeah. I just feel a bit fuzzy. Probably from sleeping too long.”  
“Do you want something to eat? Pancakes? Eggs?”  
“In a minute. I just want to cuddle for a while.”  
Chris steered her over to the couch and sat down with her, letting her curl herself around him before closing his arms around her once more. Harvey closed her eyes, listening to the sound of his breathing, recalling the hundreds of times she’d quietened her mind by listening to his breaths or his heartbeat.  
To her surprise, she began to cry again. The familiar warmth of his body, the way he tucked her head under his chin, his smell, the softness of his sweater, the big, comforting bulk of him as he held her, it all felt too much. When he noticed her quiet sniffles, he pulled her closer still, kissing her, shushing her, telling her it was okay, making her cry even harder.  
What would she do if she lost him? He would leave a hole in her very existence. They were both guilty of taking the other for granted at times. For assuming the other person would be okay with comforting them, with putting them back together after whatever catastrophe had torn them apart. At the end of bad days, they sought out the other to make it all okay again. The problem, Harvey realised, was that they were very close to a point where they were the ones tearing each other apart.  
The pregnancy test floated, unbidden, into her mind. She owed it to him to take it. If she was pregnant, he’d want to know. She tried not to imagine how disappointed he would be to father another illegitimate child.  
“Harvey, we really need to talk. I—” Chris stopped, looking at her with a frown as the doorbell rang. “Who on earth is that?”  
“I’ll get it.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeves and started to get up.  
“No.” he pulled her back down. “I’ll go.”  
She sniffed a few times before acknowledging that she needed a tissue, and seeing as she was going to the bathroom, she may as well pee, which meant… Her bag was in the kitchen. She listened to Chris say something and then another voice, a little deeper, said something back. She took the box from her bag and headed for the bathroom. Her fingers had just closed around the door handle when Chris’s voice said, “Harvey? Can you come here a second?”  
“Just a minute!” she called back, looking around for somewhere to stash the pregnancy test. She put it in the linen closet, under a stack of table linen. Then she grabbed a hank of toilet roll and hurriedly blew her nose as she headed for the front door. On the doorstep stood one of the local police officers. She couldn’t remember his name but he played golf with her dad. “Good morning, Officer. What can I do for you?”  
“I saw a car on the drive, ma’am. We don’t usually see anyone down here at this time of year.”  
“We’re spending Christmas here. Mo Brooks is my father.”  
“Of course, Ms Brooks. I just wanted to check everything was okay.”  
“I appreciate it.”  
“We’re expecting a big storm this evening. Better get those shutters down.”  
“Will do. Thanks for checking in.” Harvey closed the door and turned to Chris. “Didn’t he recognise you? Or did you think he was here to arrest you for all of your speeding tickets?”  
He laughed, following her into the kitchen. “It’s the beard. It still fools most people. Just not the die-hard fans.”  
Harvey picked up the kettle and turned to the sink to fill it. “I need food.”  
“I said I’ll make you something,” Chris said, taking the kettle from her and crowding her out with his big shoulders. “Go and recline gracefully on the couch. What do you want?”  
“Kielbasa and eggs. And tea. And toast. No, a bagel. And coffee. No, toast. Wholemeal toast! And tea.”  
“Oh my god,” Chris muttered and raised his eyes to the ceiling. He shepherded her out of the kitchen. “Go. Recline.”  
Harvey grabbed her phone from the counter and went back into the living room. Obediently, she curled up on the couch and pulled a throw over her bare legs. She had a couple of missed calls from Belle and a handful of messages. She sent messages back to Belle. It seemed Chris had told her that Harvey hadn’t been feeling well and she assured her that she was fine and promised to talk to her properly later. Guy had sent her a message and she sat and looked at his name on the screen without opening it.  
Eventually, with a sigh, she tapped on it. ‘_I hope you and Belle are doing well. I’ve just heard you’re out of a job. I’m going to be looking for an assistant GM in a couple of months and it would be great if you applied_.’ Harvey’s eyebrows climbed up her face. Assistant General Manager at the Four Seasons would be a huge step up from both the position and the hotel she’d just left. It was unlikely she would be ready to return to work when applications opened but there was no harm in keeping her options open. She messaged back, ‘_Let’s have lunch after Christmas to discuss_’, and left it there.  
She checked her emails while the smells of kielbasa and toast drifted into the room. Chris sang Jingle Bells loudly and tonelessly, making her smile and her heart ache. Nobody else would ever make her truly happy, she was certain of that. She could settle for someone, maybe Guy, maybe not, and she could learn to accept that he wasn’t Chris and never would be. Then, one day, Chris would meet someone and…  
She burst into tears just as he walked into the room, carrying a tray laden with her food. “Harvey, what’s wrong? You haven’t even tasted it yet and I didn’t put any pesto in!”  
She laughed through her tears, looking around for a tissue. “I’m just being silly.”  
He handed her a napkin and sat down beside her, setting the tray on his lap. “It’s never silly to cry.”  
“You’re just saying that because you cry at the Geico commercials.”  
“They reunited servicemen and women with their dogs!”  
She shook her head despairingly and tried to stifle a sob, which made her hiccup. “You’re such a dork.”  
He took the napkin from her hands and gently dried her eyes. “Yes, but I’m your dork.”  
She felt her smile fade and she quickly picked up the mug of tea and took a sip to hide it. She gave herself a moment to recover, then took the tray from him. “This looks so good, thank you.”  
He shrugged. “I feel like it’s the least I can do. I know you’re having a really hard time. You know I’m here for you. There’s nothing you can’t talk to me about.”  
Harvey took a big bite out of a slice of toast so she didn’t have to answer right away. What should she talk to him about first, she wondered? Being in love with him, or the possibility that she was currently pregnant with his baby? She chewed slowly. “Have you considered that, in future, Belle might want to come and live with you?”  
He looked startled, his eyebrows climbing up his face. “No, I haven’t. Mainly because she won’t.”  
“She might. It’s something you need to think about. Sooner or later she’s going to want her daddy. You’re already family to her, you’ve been a constant presence in her life. That’s why she’s coming around to the idea so fast. That and the fact she adores you.”  
He sighed and sat back, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t want you to feel threatened.”  
“I don’t. Not really. I’ve just had so much going on in my head. I feel so helpless and it’s opened the door to also feeling paranoid and useless.”  
“You’re not useless. I know you want to make Belle better. I know that if you could give any part of yourself to her, you would. And I know it upsets you that probably won’t be a match for her. But look at everything you’ve done for her. You were there when she was born to be the first person to hold her. You were there to teach her to walk and talk and read and write. You’re there every second of every single day and you have no idea how much I envy you for that.”  
Harvey pressed her lips together and stared down at her plate, her eyes swimming with tears. “You did as much as you could…”  
He shook his head. “I’ve spent too much time away. I kept all of my freedoms while you gave yours up. Last night you said that you sacrificed everything for me and I didn’t even realise just how true that was until that moment.”  
“I don’t really remember what I said last night,” she confessed. “But I was mostly just lashing out.”  
“You were being honest. It’s about time.”  
Harvey wiped away more tears. Sometimes she really hated that he knew her so well. “At times it’s been a struggle but that’s the nature of raising a child. I’m not sure if I’d have struggled any less if you’d been around, just maybe we would have struggled together.”  
“Maybe that’s easier than struggling alone?”  
She shrugged, trailing her fork through her eggs. “Maybe.”  
“When Belle is better and back at home, and when she’s comfortable, we’ll talk about what we all want in future. I definitely want to spend more time at home with her, building up our relationship. That doesn’t mean I want her to live with me, just that I want to see her more.”  
“You know I don’t have any objections. This is what I’ve wanted for the two of you since the day she was born.”  
Chris put his arm around her neck, pulling her against him to kiss her forehead. “Eat your breakfast.”  
  
The storm arrived early in the evening. Harvey had closed all of the shutters so the house was in complete darkness. Chris had spent the day finishing up with the Christmas decorations. Now the fairy lights on the tree and those he’d strung up around the room all twinkled softly, reflected in the delicate glass baubles that adorned the tree. When she walked in from the kitchen, she stopped in her tracks, looking around in wonder.  
“It’s beautiful,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. She felt nostalgic for something that she wasn’t sure she’d ever had in the first place.  
“Hey,” Chris said softly, hurriedly crossing the room to take her face in his hands, peering at her in the dim light. “What’s the matter?”  
“I don’t know.” Tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. He wiped them away with his thumbs as fast as they fell. “Now I’ve started crying, I can’t seem to stop.”  
“Harvey,” he sighed, pulling her into him. He held her close for a minute and then said, “Why don’t we slip into something a little more comfortable, bake some cookies, make some popcorn and watch trashy Christmas movies on Netflix.”  
“You know those movies make me cry. They make you cry!”  
“Then we’ll cry together. It’ll be like primal therapy but with gingerbread.”  
“Okay.”  
He smiled. “I laid out a little something for you upstairs.”  
Intrigued, Harvey went up to the bedroom. She found a fleece onesie laying on the bed, with a hood that had ears, antlers, eyes and a red Rudolph nose. She laughed, holding it up to look at it. It was typical Chris. She stripped off her clothes before pulling the onesie on. It fit perfectly, or as perfectly as a onesie could fit anyone over the age of two.  
Back in the kitchen, Chris stood mixing gingerbread dough, humming along to White Christmas. He wore a onesie that looked like an elf costume. He looked up in delight as she walked in the door. “Hey, there’s my girl! You look awesome.”  
She laughed. “I need to get my phone. We have to get a picture of this.”  
“I bought one for Belle, too. I thought she’d find it funny on Christmas morning.”  
“She’ll love it.” Harvey bit her lip, looking at how ridiculous he looked, big and bearded and dressed like an elf. “Thank you for all of this. Belle’s going to be so happy.”  
“What about you?”  
“What about me?”  
“Are you happy?”  
Harvey sighed. “That’s a loaded question.”  
“Okay,” he said, his tone thoughtful. “How about, do you feel better?”  
She nodded. “Yeah. I think I do.”  
“Good.” He smiled, his eyes twinkling. “Why don’t you start the popcorn while I do the cookies?”  
While the cookies baked, they made big foamy mugs of hot chocolate and carried it all into the living room. Chris typed ‘Christmas’ into the Netflix search and scrolled through the titles, looking for the most terrible movie they could find.  
“I want something about some hard-nosed businesswoman who hates Christmas but she meets a single dad and his kids melt her heart,” Harvey said, shovelling a fistful of popcorn into her mouth.  
Chris gave her a sideways look. “That is weirdly specific. Would you settle for ‘man who hates Christmas reconnects with high school sweetheart in unlikely circumstances and they fall in love, because Christmas’?”  
She heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I guess.”  
The movie was predictably dreadful and the sugar rush from the hot chocolate and cookies made Harvey fall asleep before they even got halfway. When she opened her eyes again, all she could hear was the storm raging outside. Chris sat beside her, his head resting on the back of the sofa, gazing at her intently. She blinked at him, trying to work out what she saw in his eyes. Something about the look was familiar but she couldn’t place it. It made her skin feel warm and flushed.  
Without warning, he closed the few inches between them, kissing her hard on the mouth, his hands tangling in her hair as he pulled her closer. They had kissed thousands of times but it had never once felt like that. She pulled away, searching his face for something, anything to tell her what that was. The look in his eyes as he splayed his fingers gently around her throat, using his thumb to push her chin up so her mouth met his…  
With Herculean effort, Harvey pushed the thought aside. She couldn’t trust her instincts. If she’d been wrong about Belle’s tone yesterday, she could be wrong now. And what else had she misinterpreted? It was probably nothing.  
“You’re the sexiest reindeer I’ve ever seen,” he murmured, moving his lips to her throat.  
“Are elves and reindeers even anatomically compatible?” she pondered, her hands in his hair as his mouth drove her crazy.  
He grinned wickedly, his fingers smoothly sliding down her zip. “Let’s find out, shall we?”  
  
Harvey’s phone rang incessantly. Somewhere, in the depths of sleep, she recognised the sound. By the time she reached out her hand and pulled the phone under the covers, the ringing stopped and Chris’s phone began to ring. She squinted at the display. It had been the hospital, and it was four o’clock in the morning.  
She felt the burn of adrenaline, her limbs starting to tremble. Chris answered the call and she almost couldn’t hear his voice over the roar of blood in her ears and her pounding heartbeat. She leaned over to the switch on the light and turned to look at him.  
He sat up, listening to the caller, his face ghostly pale. “Yeah…okay…okay…we’ll be there as soon as we can.”  
“What’s happened?” Harvey knew it was bad. It had to be at four in the morning and Chris looked as if he was about to cry.  
“Belle got a fever and they think she’s got some kind of bacterial infection. Mel…” His voice broke and it seemed to take an eternity for him to get the words out. “Mel wants to put her in a coma.”


	14. Chapter 14

Chris drove them back into Boston far too fast. Harvey was too terrified of what they’d find at the hospital to be afraid of his driving. The storm coupled with the early hour meant Route 3 was practically deserted as they flew along and the journey that should have taken them around ninety minutes took only an hour. The two of them barely said a word to one another the entire time, lost in their own thoughts.  
Harvey didn’t give the possibility of any waiting press or paparazzi a second thought. All she wanted was to get to Belle and nobody would stand in her way. Chris parked close to the entrance and they rushed inside to the elevators. As they waited for one to descend, he slipped his hand into hers. She turned to look at him, surprised. The look on his face so accurately mirrored the way she felt inside that she could only squeeze his fingers in what she hoped was a reassuring way.   
They hurried down the empty corridor to Belle’s room to find the door open and Mel standing beside the bed with a couple of nurses, all speaking in hushed voices.  
Mel looked at them in surprise as they rushed in. “That was quick.”  
“Chris drove,” Harvey said, as if that explained everything. Her eyes were on Belle, who was sleeping soundly. Other than flushed cheeks, she looked fine. “What’s happening?”  
“I’m not certain yet. Everything happened incredibly quickly. Belle had a low-grade fever all day which we had been monitoring but early this morning it spiked to 104℉.”  
“Jesus…” Chris muttered.  
“They called me in a couple of hours before I called you because she’s showing signs of sepsis. I suspect a bacterial infection and, until we can ascertain exactly what’s going on, I think an induced coma is the safest option.”  
“Sepsis?” Harvey echoed. The world pressed in on her again, the maelstrom of emotions whirled back into her head. “But…I spoke to her earlier. She was fine.”  
“As I said, it came on suddenly and nobody had any way of knowing. I’ve placed her on broad-spectrum antibiotics and I’ve run all the tests. It’s just a waiting game for the results. We’re about to move to her the ICU. Why don’t you both wait in the relatives’ room and I’ll come to get you as soon as she’s settled?”  
“Are you going to put her under right away? Can’t we speak to her first?” Chris asked, his voice brittle with emotion.  
“Of course. I’m sorry. I can give you a couple of minutes while we wait for the orderly.” She signalled to the two nurses and they left the room.  
Harvey looked up at Chris. He looked terrified. She squeezed his hand a final time before going to one side of the bed while he went to the other. “Belle? Wake up, muffin.”  
She opened her eyes, bleary and confused. “Mommy? Chris?”  
“We’re here, sweet pea.” Chris smoothed his hand over Belle’s forehead. “Everything’s going to be okay.”  
“What’s happening? I feel so bad.”  
“You’ve got an infection. Mel’s going to make you go to sleep while they figure out what’s wrong.”  
“What? Why?” she whimpered, turning her head to look at Harvey.  
She gripped Belle’s hand in her own, pressing it to her lips. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re just going to sleep for a little while. When you wake up, you’re going to feel so much better.”  
“We’ll be right there with you.”  
“Promise you’ll be there when I wake up.”  
“We promise.” Harvey gritted her teeth so hard it hurt. She wouldn’t let Belle see how distressed she was. “You’re so strong and brave.”  
“I love you,” Chris whispered, bending to kiss her.  
“I love you,” Belle said, sniffing back tears. “Is it going to hurt?”  
“Not a bit. Just like when Mel made you go to sleep to put in your Hickman and you won’t know anything about it until you wake up.”  
Mel stood at the door, an orderly at her shoulder. Harvey tucked Belle’s covers around her, then bent to kiss her. “You’re my beautiful girl and I love you so much. You fight hard, okay?”  
Belle nodded, looking between her and Chris. “Promise you won’t leave me.”  
“Promise,” Chris said, standing back as the orderly prepared to wheel the bed out.  
“Never.” Harvey meant it. Every time she turned away, something bad happened. She wasn’t leaving her again. Not for a minute.  
She stood back beside Chris, who put an arm around her shoulders. She tried to keep a smile on her face as Belle was wheeled away. Mel gave them a sympathetic smile. “I’ll see you as soon as she’s settled.”  
Mel left and Harvey turned to Chris. He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her against him. “It’s going to be okay, Harvey.”  
“Sometimes you’re a terrible actor.”  
He gave a soft snort of laughter that turned into a sob as he gathered her into a bone-crushing hug. She clung to him, her tears soaking into his jacket. Crying with him, being in his arms with the knowledge that he felt what she was feeling, reminded her she was not alone. The uncertainty, the fear, the guilt, it wasn’t just hers. It was his too.  
The wait in the relatives’ room seemed endless. They took it in turns to pace the small room or sit on the small couch, flicking sightlessly through the magazines that littered the table. When Mel finally walked into the room, Harvey and Chris gravitated towards each other, unconsciously wrapping their arms around the other.  
Harvey took one look at her face and her insides turned to ice. “What’s wrong?”  
She looked at them both, her expression grim. “Belle’s very sick. We’ve put her into a coma to try to prevent septic shock but I haven’t found a cause for the infection. Without knowing what we’re up against, I can’t give her the right treatment. Sepsis is… it can be very fast. I think maybe you should call your families to come in and see her.”  
Her knees crumpled but Chris was holding her so tightly that she didn’t fall.  
“Are you saying she’s going to die?” he demanded.  
“Nothing is certain but…you need to be prepared.”  
Harvey felt numb. When she pulled away from Chris there was a smudge of blood on his t-shirt. Frowning, she touched her face, her fingers coming away red. She’d bitten her lip so hard that she’d made it bleed. Chris was saying something, she could hear his voice rumbling in his chest, but she couldn’t distinguish his words, then Mel left.  
“Are you okay?” he pulled her away from him, peering into her face.  
She shook her head, dazed, speechless.  
“Sit down.” He guided her down onto the sofa and sat beside her. He put his thumb on her bottom lip. Even though his touch was gentle, she flinched. “Let me see.”  
She opened her mouth for him. He grimaced and produced a tissue, pressing it to her lip. “Chris…”  
He shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line. “Don’t speak. I…I don’t know. We’ll get a second opinion or something.”  
“How can we get a second opinion on sepsis?”  
“Did I not just tell you not to speak?”  
She tried to smile but the numbness was wearing off and tears threatened to overtake her. “Where did Mel go? Can we see Belle?”  
“She got bleeped. Not to Belle,” he added hurriedly. “She said she’ll send someone for us as soon as they’re ready.”  
“I guess we should call our parents.”  
“I guess.” He nodded, leaning forward with his arms resting on his knees. His skin was alabaster and purple shadows had formed under his eyes like bruises.  
She laid her hand on his cheek. “We’ve got to be strong. She needs us to believe in her.”  
He sniffed hard and rubbed his hands over his face. “You’re right. We need to be positive. I…I just…”  
“I know,” she whispered. She didn’t know where her eerie calmness was coming from. She felt sick, panicked and terrified, and a familiar pain clawed at her insides. As much as she wanted to scream and cry and rage and smash things, none of those things would help Belle.  
A nurse came to take them to the ICU. They gathered their things and followed her. The walk seemed endless, down corridor after corridor and two different elevators, until they finally arrived at the medical intensive care unit. The nurse punched a code into a keypad beside the doors and they slid open.  
Belle’s room was directly in front of the nurses’ station which impressed the seriousness of the situation on Harvey in a way that words just couldn’t. She gripped Chris’s hand as they stepped inside. She didn’t know what she had expected to see but it wasn’t as frightening as she had anticipated. Belle lay flat on the bed with an assortment of leads and tubes running from various machines but she looked, underneath it all, like she was just sleeping.  
Another nurse came to show them around and explain the rules of the unit, then the attending doctor came and talked to them about the plan for Belle’s care. She would be monitored twenty-fours a day, with a nurse sitting in the room at all times to monitor her vital signs. They had sent blood samples and skin swabs to the lab to try to find the cause of the infection, or at least the type of bacteria so they could use the correct antibiotics. All they could do was wait and hope and, if they were so inclined, pray.  
Once the doctor had gone, Chris went to the waiting room to call his family. Harvey sat beside the bed, holding Belle’s limp hand in hers and smoothing down her tangled hair. It crossed her mind that it needed a wash. A nurse sat on a stool at the foot of the bed, a large chart laid out on a stand in front of her. She made almost constant notes, looking up at the various screens and machines and noting down numbers.  
“Can I brush her hair?” Harvey asked.  
“Sure. Just be careful you don’t disconnect anything.”  
She dug in her bag for a hairbrush and began to gently brush the knots out of Belle’s hair. She did the best she could, although it was difficult to get to the back where most of the tangles were. She brushed it over one shoulder and then braided it. It was strangely cathartic.  
Chris came back looking more miserable than ever. He’d obviously been crying and Harvey felt a tug in her chest. “My mom is on her way. My sisters will come later and Scott’s in LA but he’s going to fly back.”  
“I guess I should call my parents, too.”  
“Go. I’ll stay with Belle.”  
Harvey picked up her bag and walked outside. She could hear a child crying, as if in pain, and she caught a glimpse into a room opposite where a man and woman stood beside a crib, weeping. She dropped her gaze to the floor, not looking up again until she got outside the unit. Her eyes and lungs burned with the effort of not crying.  
She found the waiting room, which was mercifully empty, and dropped into an armchair. The last thing she wanted was to deal with her mother, who would no doubt manage to make it both all about her and Harvey’s fault at the same time. She took her phone from her bag, weighing it in her hands for a moment before making the call.  
Of course, it was her mother who answered. “It’s me.”  
“I know. We have caller ID. What is it?”  
Harvey rolled her eyes. _What is it?_ Not, _how are you?_ or _how’s Belle? What is it?_ “I need you and Daddy to come to the hospital. They’ve put Belle in a coma. She has sepsis and…and…” Her voice didn’t want to say it out loud.  
To her great surprise, her mother’s voice was soft, verging on warm. “We’ll come right now. Where are you?”  
“The medical intensive care unit. You need to get a pass from the front desk. Just tell them you’re her grandparents.”  
“We’ll see you shortly.”  
Harvey hung up. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had spoken to her with anything close to warmth. She must have still been in elementary school. It should infuriate her that it took her granddaughter possibly dying to bring out any maternal affection but she couldn’t bring herself to feel anything.  
She was utterly drained and wrung out. She’d been through so many emotions in the few hours she’d been awake, but paired with the events of the past couple of days, then the past week…her tank was empty. She didn’t have anything left. She felt as if she should be feeling more, that she should be behaving differently. That she was doing it wrong.  
With a sigh, she got up, then she gasped and clutched her belly. The niggling pain she’d had all morning had intensified to the point that she could no longer ignore it. There was a bathroom just across the hallway and she went inside, locking the door and leaning against it.  
The pregnancy test was still hidden in the linen closet back at the beach. It was too late now. There was no point speculating if she had been or not, she wasn’t now and that was all that mattered. She told herself that it was okay. That it was great. One less thing to stress about. It was the best thing for literally everyone right now. For her, for Chris, for Belle, for their families. There were no losers here. So why was she crying? Silent tears slid down her face and dripped from her chin.  
The part of her that wanted to have more children, that longed to be a proper family, mourned. The tiny part of her that had secretly wanted to be pregnant with Chris’s baby mourned even harder. She pulled off a ream of toilet paper and held it against her eyes, stopping the tears from staining her face. She was being utterly ridiculous.  
She found a pad in her bag and set about cleaning herself up. Then she washed her hands and face and tidied her hair. She looked in the mirror at her pale, frightened face, judging herself harshly for crying for something she’d never had while her daughter fought for her life a few feet away.


	15. Chapter 15

Harvey woke with a start, blearily looking around to try to work out where she was. The chair she’d sat in all day had reclined down into a cot and one of the nurses had shown her a closet where they kept pillows and blankets. She sat up, looking across at Belle. The machines continued to beep rhythmically as the ventilator hissed an accompaniment. She had thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep with all the noise in the room but it had actually been quite soothing.  
A new nurse sat at the end of the bed and Harvey turned to her. “Is everything okay?”  
“Yes, ma’am. Everything’s fine,” she said with a little smile.  
Something had woken her, she knew it. She pushed off the blanket and got up, stretching her arms over her head. It was still dark outside and the windows were wet with rain. The clock above the bed said five o’clock. She couldn’t believe she’d only been there for twenty-four hours. Both Chris’s mom and her mother and father had visited the day before and would be back in a few hours’ time. Chris hadn’t wanted to leave but they only allowed one parent to spend the night in the room. He insisted he’d sleep in the waiting room until Harvey persuaded him to go home and pick up clean clothes for her.  
She moved towards the bed, bending down to kiss Belle’s forehead. Her skin felt warm but not as hot as it had done the day before. Harvey’s eyes flicked over the vitals on the monitor above the bed but saw no change, either negative or positive, in the numbers she’d stared at for hours the day before. Just for something to do, she rearranged the blanket over Belle and smoothed it down. She paused, frowning, running a hand over her belly again.  
“Why is her stomach so hard?”  
The nurse looked up from the chart. “Huh?”  
“Her stomach. It feels solid.”  
The nurse got down from the stool and joined Harvey beside the bed. She felt Belle’s stomach over the blanket, then whipped it off and felt it again. “I’ll be right back.”  
Harvey’s heart beat a tattoo in her chest as the nurse ran outside, returning a few seconds later with a doctor. He barely touched Belle before he ordered that an ultrasound be brought in. Harvey melted into the background, not wanting to be sent out of the room as she watched the doctor pick up Belle’s notes and start flicking through. “Page Doctor Jones,” he said, and the nurse left the room.  
Less than a minute later, a machine was wheeled into the room. The doctor covered Belle’s legs and hips with a sheet and then lifted the hospital gown and squirted gel onto her stomach. He frowned at the screen and Harvey held her breath. He adjusted the angle of the probe and frowned some more. The nurse who had gone to page Mel returned with another female doctor. She stood beside the male doctor, joining him in frowning at the screen. They talked in low voices, frowned at the screen one more time and then turned it off, and the female doctor left.  
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Harvey couldn’t bear to wait another second.  
The doctor turned to her, looking surprised she was even in the room. “It looks like appendicitis. I’ve called for her doctor but we’re going to call a surgeon in as well.”  
“Is that what’s causing the sepsis?”  
He seemed about to give a typical non-committal doctor’s response but he must have seen the desperation in her eyes because he said, “Very probably.”  
She let out a breath, leaning back against the wall. Tears came fast, but they were tears of relief. She picked up her phone from the arm of the chair and headed out the waiting room to call Chris. Despite the early hour he answered on only the second ring.  
“Harvey? Is everything okay?”  
“I think so, yeah.” She rubbed a hand over her face, drying her tears. “Belle’s got appendicitis and that’s probably what’s causing the sepsis. They’re paging a surgeon now to come see her.”  
“That’s awesome news. How did they find out?”  
“It was the weirdest thing. I woke up randomly and put her blanket over her. Her stomach felt hard and I asked why and within five minutes they’d done a scan and said it was appendicitis.”  
Chris didn’t say anything for a moment and when he spoke, his voice sounded tight, like he was trying not to cry. “That’s amazing, sweetheart.”  
“I…I didn’t do anything.”  
“You might have saved her life. That’s pretty incredible.”  
It was Harvey’s turn to go quiet. She sat down on one of the sofas and stared hard at a small stain on the carpet, trying to keep her emotions in check. “I guess.”  
“I’m just going to shower and dress and I’ll be on my way. I packed your bag last night but do you need anything else?”  
“I’m good. Drive carefully.”  
“I always do!”  
The ICU was mostly quiet at such an early hour, except for Belle’s room which was a hive of activity. A nurse took blood from the Hickman while another waited to hook up a platelets transfusion. A small knot of doctors huddled in the corner, talking quietly. Harvey put her cot back into chair form and sat down, trying to keep out of the way.  
Mel arrived a few minutes later and joined the cluster of doctors. She couldn’t hear what they were saying over the sounds of the machines but they all looked very serious. After a couple of minutes, Mel came over to her.  
“I have bad news and not so bad news.”  
“You really need to work on your opening. What’s the bad news?”  
“We think it’s probably ruptured which is what’s causing the sepsis. The bad news is that it’s going to be an incredibly risky operation.”  
“Because of her blood not clotting and the neutropenia?”  
Mel nodded. “Exactly because of those things. Now, Doctor Ali here,” she gestured vaguely over her shoulder at one of the other doctors, “is one of the best pediatric surgeons in the country. He’s happy to operate to remove Belle’s appendix. The not so bad news is that we’ll be able to find out which bacteria is causing all the problems and get her on the right antibiotics which will help her immensely. Is Chris on his way?”  
“Yes, I called him not long ago. He’ll have left by now.”  
“Good. We want to run a few more tests and Doctor Ali wants to do another ultrasound. Hopefully, he’ll be here by the time we’re ready to go to the OR.”  
“Mel…” Harvey closed her eyes. She needed to know but at the same time, she didn’t want to hear the answer. “What are the chances she’s going to pull through this?”  
“Right now, her odds aren’t great at all. But if we can get the appendix out cleanly with no major bleeds, and get her on the right meds, her odds improve drastically. If the op is successful, we’ll keep her sedated until the infection clears up.”  
A voice called Mel away and Harvey sank back into the chair. She wanted to be by Belle’s side, holding her hand and telling her what was happening, but her bed was a hive of activity. Despite being tall for her age, she looked so tiny, dwarfed by all the adults and machinery surrounding her.  
They’d just completed the second ultrasound when Chris arrived. He carried two cups and a brown paper bag, which he dropped into Harvey’s lap. “Because I know you haven’t eaten yet.”  
“Thank you,” she said as he bent to kiss her cheek.  
He put the cups down on the shelf beside her chair, then went to Belle, bending low to kiss her forehead and whisper, “Hey, sweet pea. I’m here,” before turning back to Harvey. “What’s been happening?”  
“They just did another ultrasound for the surgeon. Mel said the operation will be risky.”  
Chris let out a breath, clasping his hands behind his neck. “And it has to be done because there’s no way she’s getting better without it. It’s a good thing she’s out of it, the poor kid would be in agony.” He looked from Belle to her. “And how are you feeling?”  
She shrugged. “Better than Belle, which I can’t stand.”  
He crouched down beside her and gently brushed the back of his hand across her cheek. “I know.”  
She looked into his eyes for as long as she could bear. The pull she felt to tell him all of the secrets she kept from him was almost overwhelming. Instead, she looked away, opening the bag he had given her and taking out a cinnamon and raisin bagel. It was still warm and melted butter oozed out of the sides. She felt the familiar swell in her heart. He knew her so well, even down to the way she liked her bagels. “Thank you.”  
He flashed her a smile. “You’re welcome.”  
Harvey ate her bagel and thought about all the tiny, insignificant things they knew about each other. Like how he superstitiously put on his pants, socks and shoes right side first, or how the smell of petrichor made him so happy he’d cry. He knew her favourite wine in the world was a $6 bottle of Pink Moscato and that she still knew all the lyrics and the dance routine to ‘Ice Ice Baby’. The ridiculous, mundane things they’d learned during their long years of friendship. It seemed impossible that anyone would ever know her as well as Chris did.  
He had pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat holding Belle’s hand, talking to her in a soft voice. He spoke so naturally, as if he and Belle were in the middle of a conversation. Tears pricked Harvey’s eyes as she watched him. All she wanted was to love him and for him to love her back.  
Mel returned with Doctor Ali the surgeon and they ran through the risks of the op again for Chris’s benefit. Belle’s appendix had a small rupture but Doctor Ali was confident he could remove it without too many issues. The greatest concern was that there would be a bleed, and he told them that he was going to be extra cautious and the surgery may take longer than usual.  
When the orderlies took Belle down to the OR, Harvey and Chris followed and were shown into yet another waiting room. Harvey sat down with a resigned sigh, looking at the same old magazines on the coffee table.  
Chris must have seen the disheartened look in her eye because he sat down beside her, offering her his hand. “You should get a book on your phone.”  
“You know I don’t like screen reading.”  
“Have you called your parents yet?”  
She shook her head. “Have you?”  
“Yeah, on the way in. I told my mom to stay home until I call again. There’s no point in having everyone here stressing each other out.”  
The previous day had been pretty fraught with both of their families there and nobody speaking to each other. There was no way she could deal with another day of that. “Good plan. I’ll wait until she’s out of surgery and I have news for them.”  
“Have you thought about what’s going to happen with the beach house, and getting your car back?”  
“Not really. I keep hoping we can still take her there. I know it won’t be for Christmas, but I don’t see Mel letting us take her at all now.”  
“Me neither,” he said wistfully. “I was really looking forward to spending a proper Christmas with her.”  
“I know. And I know everything seems bleak right now but I think there will be plenty more birthdays and Christmases.”  
He let go of her hand to stroke her hair, then put his arm around her shoulders. “I think so, too.”  
“She’s going to be furious when she finds out she missed her birthday.”  
He gave a soft snort of laughter. “We’ll make it up to her.”  
Harvey shifted her weight away from him slightly so she could rest her head on his shoulder, tucking her legs up on the couch. “How long do appendectomies usually take?”  
Chris leaned against her and slid his phone out of his pocket. He swiped and tapped for a minute before saying, “About an hour.”  
She glanced at her watch. It had barely been ten minutes. She closed her eyes and counted slowly backwards from one hundred. Her mind began to wander and she dreamed that she was in a deserted hospital and could hear Belle screaming for her as she frantically ran from one endless corridor to another, searching for her.  
When she woke up, she was hot and sticky and felt as if there wasn’t enough air in the room. Somehow, she had her head in Chris’s lap. He had his arms stretched out along the back of the couch and his head tipped back, snoring gently.  
With some difficulty, she levered herself upright and got up, stretching her arms over her head. She pulled off her sweater and fanned herself with a magazine from the coffee table. There was an AC unit up on the wall and she went over to squint at the controls before managing to turn it on. The immediate blast of cold air was incredibly welcome, and she stood underneath the flow of air and let it ruffle her hair a while.  
Her dream had shaken her up. The corridor outside was silent and deserted and her skin prickled uncomfortably. She went back to the couch to curl up against Chris’s chest. Either he roused just enough to know she was there or he instinctively knew because he moved an arm to hold her.  
As safe as she felt in his arms, she had nothing but her thoughts for company. Even Chris couldn’t protect her from those. She, and she suspected it of him, too, was putting on a very brave face to hide the paralysing fear that they would lose Belle. She hadn’t even allowed herself a second to think about what she’d do if she didn’t get better and come home. Her world would end. It was like trying to think of the scale of the universe, her mind just couldn’t comprehend it.  
Belle had reached the stage where she was beginning to look more like a teenager than a child. Harvey was shocked, sometimes, when she looked at her and realised how much she’d grown and she was faced with the reality that she wouldn’t be a child forever, even if she still had a lot of growing up to do. She could spend hours and hours thinking about the future and wondering what Belle would become, what kind of person she would wind up being.  
As abhorrent as the thought was that Belle might not make it, Harvey worried about the toll it was taking on her body. She wondered, even if they did find a donor and have a successful transplant, whether she would get her happy, active little girl back. Would she be able to give her the same freedoms that she’d enjoy all her life or would she turn into a terrible helicopter parent, constantly telling her to be careful?  
Her phone rang in her bag and she hooked it closer with her foot so she didn’t have to relinquish her place on Chris’s chest. “Hello?”  
“Hello, is that Ms Brooks?”  
“Yes.”  
“Ms Brooks, my name is Kay Price, from _Revelations Weekly_.” Then, quickly, “Please don’t hang up.”  
“What do you want?” Harvey got up and walked away from Chris, as if the journalist could somehow see him sitting there sleeping. “How did you get my number?”  
“We’re about to run a story about Chris Evans and his daughter and, of course, you. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”  
“I have nothing to say to you.”  
“Well, we’re going to run it anyway so it’s really your only chance to get your side of the story across. What’s wrong with your daughter? Does it have anything to do with Chris’s violent temper?”   
Harvey actually felt her blood pressure rise. It was on the tip of her tongue to shout that Chris was the sweetest, kindest man and he’d never hurt anyone, least of all his own child, but she stopped herself. “Stop harassing us!”  
“We have the video footage of him slamming your head against a car. Has he hit you before? Is this why he keeps you and your daughter a secret? Is he there right now and you can’t speak freely? I can call you back at a more convenient time.”  
“Don’t you dare put words in my mouth. I—”  
She whirled around as her phone was taken from her hand and watched Chris press the end call button and then switch it off completely. He pulled her trembling body into his arms. “I’m sorry.”  
“She…she said they’re going to write an article saying you’re abusive. That you hurt Belle.”  
“It’s a tactic they use,” Chris said quietly. “They rile you up so you blurt out the truth.”  
“Do something. Say something. Don’t let them get away with it.”  
“Who was it?”  
“_Revelations Weekly_.”  
He tutted and sighed. “That’s trash. Nobody reads that.”  
“Chris, please?” She pulled away to look at him. “It’s not just you that you’re protecting anymore. It’s Belle, too. She doesn’t need articles like that being written about her dad!”  
“Okay, okay,” he said soothingly, looking at her with concerned eyes. “I’ll call Megan later. I promise.”  
She turned away and sat on the edge of the nearest chair, her head in her hands. “She said you slammed my head against the fucking car.” Tears of anger burned her eyes. “And there are idiots out there who will believe what she says rather than what they see.”  
He crouched down beside her. “Harvey, I can’t tell you the number of stories like this that have been written over the years. People forget them, they move on to the next thing.”  
They both looked up as the door opened and Doctor Ali walked in. He smiled and Harvey sagged with relief, slipping her hand into Chris’s as they both stood up.  
“How did it go?” Chris asked.  
“Textbook. I made a thorough check for bleeds before I stitched her up. Belle was nice and strong throughout the surgery. We’re just waiting for the lab results so we can get her on the right meds.”  
Chris beamed, shaking the doctor’s hand vigorously. “That’s great! Thank you. Thank you so much!”  
“She’s in recovery now and we’ll keep an eye on her for an hour or two, then you’ll be able to see her. Oh, and nice catch, Mom. If we hadn’t found it when we did, things would be a lot worse.”  
Harvey couldn’t speak. She knew the moment she opened her mouth she would dissolve into tears. They had needed a win so badly. Something to cling to in the darker moments. It wasn’t over, nowhere near, but they had a tiny glimmer of hope.  
  
Harvey lost the argument over who should stay with Belle that night. She had wanted to stay again but Chris told her in no uncertain terms to go home, eat, shower and sleep. Especially shower. She surreptitiously sniffed herself as she climbed into his car. Maybe he was right.  
Mel had asked them not to let their families visit as they were still closely monitoring Belle for any post-op complications but there had been a slight improvement in her condition that evening, giving them another much-needed boost. Harvey even managed to tap her fingers on the steering wheel in time with the song on the radio as she drove back to Chris’s.  
The smile was wiped off her face by the car sitting on the drive when she arrived. She climbed out of the car and cautiously went into the house. Lisa was in the kitchen, packing the freezer with a stack of foil trays.  
“Hi,” Harvey said shortly.  
“Oh, hello.” To her great surprise, she heard nerves in Lisa’s voice. “I wasn’t sure if either of you were coming back tonight.”  
“Only one of us can stay,” she explained. “Chris said I need to shower.”  
“I made you some casseroles. I figured neither of you have time to cook or eat properly. Shall I leave one out for you?”  
“Did you make the mac and cheeseburger one I like?” she asked grudgingly.  
Lisa pushed one of the trays across the counter. “With extra onions.”  
“Thank you,” she said with a sigh, shrugging off her coat and getting a plate out of the cupboard.  
“Harvey…”  
Here it comes, she thought, gently easing the lid from the tray. “Yes?”  
“Harvey, I want you to know how sorry I am for the way I’ve been acting. I’ve been so angry and I tried to lash out at you. It was wrong and I apologise.”  
She chewed her lip, looking at Lisa carefully. “Okay. Thank you.”  
“Out of all people, I should understand. I…I think I’m mostly angry at myself, for not guessing what was going on. I think about how much you must have struggled bringing Belle up alone, with Chris away so much, and how hard it must have been for you to not say anything. Although I have to admit that you both covered your tracks well. I’ve always just assumed that the two of you were quietly in love with each other.”  
She tried not to betray a hint of emotion, to not let the hurt show on her face. “It’s not like that…”  
“Oh, I think it is,” Lisa said, her voice soft and kind and made her want to cry. “I’m a woman, too, Harvey. I know what it’s like to be in love with a man who takes you for granted.”  
A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away, but another took its place, and then another. She exhaled, staring up at the ceiling, trying to rein them in. “He…oh,” she took another breath, trying to relax her throat enough to speak. “He doesn’t know.”  
“Ignorance isn’t an excuse. I can only guess at how complicated your relationship with him must be.”  
“I don’t know what to do. It just feels like I need to say something but we’re in the middle of all of this with Belle, and we’re both exhausted and terrified and all I can think of is telling him how much I love him and need him and-and _want_ him. Then I feel terrible because Belle’s fighting for her life and we never seem to be there. I don’t… I can’t…”  
Lisa put her arms around her. “It’s okay, honey. You have a good cry.”  
Being mothered broke something in Harvey. Until that moment, she hadn’t realised how much she’d longed for someone who wasn’t Chris to just hold her and let her cry and tell her everything would be okay. She cried much like she had at the beach house, and Lisa held her and shushed her, and she felt comforted in a way that Chris just couldn’t replicate.  
When her tears finally subsided, Lisa poured her a glass of wine and heated up a plate of food, then sat and listened while Harvey poured out her poor heart. She told her everything, about Chris, and about Belle, and about how she blamed herself for being a completely inadequate mother. Lisa listened and didn’t interrupt and when Harvey had finally talked herself out, she hugged her again.  
“You are a great mom. A fantastic mom. Belle is…” Lisa shook her head, lost for words for once. “I am so proud that she’s my granddaughter. She’s a joy, such a smart kid and she’s so sweet. That’s all on you. I wouldn’t have known any of mine were sick any faster than you, I promise you. You’re going through a terrible, terrible time and it’s okay to feel unbalanced and exhausted and emotional. I’d be worried if you didn’t.”  
“I feel so guilty.”  
“What about?”  
She shrugged. “Everything?”  
Lisa smiled. “That’s just motherhood. Harvey, your secret is out now. You can call me up whenever you want to vent or cry or ask for advice. You’re not on your own.”  
By the time Lisa left, Harvey felt lighter and freer than she had in a long time. Once she’d showered, she put on one of Chris’s t-shirts and climbed into his bed. She’d sent him a message to say goodnight but guessed his phone would be off. The next day was Belle’s twelfth birthday. Seeing as she wouldn’t be able to blow out the candles on her cake, Harvey made a wish for her.  
While trying to get comfortable, she put her hand under the pillow and encountered something soft, squishy and vaguely familiar. She pulled out Mrs Bunny. For a moment, she frowned down at the soft toy, not knowing how it had made its way from Belle’s hospital room to Chris’s bedroom. Then it dawned on her. Chris had brought it home. He’d taken it from Belle’s things and brought it home and slept with it under his pillow. She pressed her lips together, determined not to cry yet again. But, despite her best efforts, her tears dried on her cheeks as she fell asleep clutching the toy tightly in her hand.  
  



	16. Chapter 16

Belle’s birthday was bittersweet. Although they sang _Happy Birthday_ to her, her presents were still at the beach house and there seemed little point making a fuss when she wasn’t awake to enjoy it. Harvey was content to sit with her, reading _Little Women_ to her in a quiet voice and watching her vitals improve hour upon hour as, at last, the antibiotics fought off the infection.  
Late in the afternoon, while Chris was out making calls, Mel walked in with a rare smile on her face. “I think we’re going to start waking her up soon. Maybe tomorrow or the day after.”  
“How long does it take?”  
“It depends. We do it slowly so as not to overload the brain. She hasn’t been out long, which is good. There might be times where it seems like she’s awake but she lapses back or she doesn’t seem to be waking at all. I’ll talk you through it more when we start the process.”  
“I miss her so much.”  
Mel laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I know all of this is incredibly hard for you. You know I can’t commit to a prognosis but if we can find her a donor in the next few weeks, I really think she’s got a fighting chance.”  
“And if we don’t?”  
“Then we can try the ATG. Remember, we can always try that first and still go for a transplant later if it’s unsuccessful. Belle wants the transplant, you and Chris want it, too, and that’s fine. There’s always hope, Harvey.”  
She wiped her eyes, taking a shuddery breath. “I just want my little girl back. I know we can’t take her to the Cape any more but I really hope she’s awake by Christmas. Both Belle and Chris deserve a proper Christmas together.”  
“We’ll do our very best.”  
Mel left and Harvey continued reading aloud until Chris returned. He’d obviously visited the vending machine because he walked in with pockets full of candy. “Milky Way or Snickers?”  
Harvey smiled, setting the book aside. Her eyes ached from staring at the print for so long “How is that even a question?”  
He handed her the Milky Way and sat down beside her. “Everything okay?”  
“Mel said they’re probably going to start waking her up in the next couple of days. She said it can take a while.”  
He sighed. “I hope she’s awake by Christmas.”  
“That’s what I said.”  
Chris chewed on his Snickers for a moment, looking thoughtful. “My mom wants to visit this evening. Why don’t we drive down to the beach house? We can sort everything out and bring your car back.”  
“I’ve kind of forgotten I even have my own car.”  
He smiled. “It’s probably our best chance. I don’t want to leave her once they take her off the ventilator and I’m sure wild horses won’t drag you away, either. We know she’s getting better and she won’t be alone.”  
She looked at Belle. She’d sworn she wouldn’t leave her but they really did need to go and sort out the house and pick up their things. “You’re right.”  
Once Lisa arrived, Harvey and Chris said their goodbyes and headed for Cape Cod. When they arrived at the house, they found a parcel propped up in the corner of the porch beside the front door. Chris smiled when he saw it. “That’s for me.”  
He immediately spirited it away upstairs and Harvey wandered through the ground floor, assessing what needed to be done and gathering her things. She turned on the Christmas lights and was once again hit by how wonderful the room looked. It seemed such a shame to take down the decorations that Chris had spent so long putting up, and the lovely tree.  
“Beautiful,” Chris murmured, walking up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. “Why don’t we have our own little Christmas right now, just the two of us?”  
“Do I have to wear the onesie?”  
“It just wouldn’t be Christmas without a sexy reindeer.” He turned his head to plant a kiss on the side of her neck.  
She giggled, shying away from the goosebump-inducing contact of his lips on her skin and turning to face him. “You want to exchange gifts?”  
He nodded. “I can’t imagine we’re going to be hanging around to open gifts on Christmas morning, and we haven’t decorated at home, so yeah.”  
There was only one thing she wanted for Christmas and it was something that no end of wishing would bring her. Even fictional genies stipulated that you couldn’t wish for someone to fall in love with you. “Okay.”  
He went upstairs first to finish wrapping her gift, returning in his ridiculous elf onesie with two boxes in his arms, one shoebox shaped and the other a little larger. Harvey felt a jolt of excitement as she went up to change and grab his gifts. While she’d been printing off pictures of Belle and her friends, something had occurred to her as a sort of extra gift. She retrieved the bundle of papers from her suitcase and, the absence of an envelope, rolled them up and tied them with a ribbon.  
“Me first!” Chris said as she walked back into the room. He sat on the floor in front of the tree and pulled her down beside him. “This is the first present I bought you but then I had a better idea. Open it first.”  
He handed her the shoebox-sized gift. It definitely wasn’t shoes. It was very heavy and felt solid. She carefully pulled off the wrapping paper, revealing a wooden box with burned lettering on the lid. Her heart thumped with excitement as she pulled the lid off and gasped with delight. “Chris! This is…wow!”  
“It’s the right one, yeah?”  
She nodded, overcome with emotion. It was her favourite Scotch whisky, distilled in 1981, the year they were both born, and bottled in 2006, the year Belle had been born. The golden liquid glowed in the lights from the tree. “It’s perfect. I can’t believe you tracked it down.”  
“I’ve been working on it for a while,” he said softly, his eyes on her face.  
She wiped her eyes on the sleeves of her onesie. “How on earth did you think of a better gift than this?”  
“Well, you helped a little.” He passed her the bigger gift.  
“What do you mean?” She frowned at him, running her finger over the wrapping paper.  
“Just open it.”  
She peeled back the paper and saw the word MacBook. “Oh! Chris, you shouldn’t have. This is far too good a replacement for my old laptop.”  
“Technically, that’s not the present so it doesn’t count. Take it out.”  
She took it out of the box and placed it on the floor in front of her. Chris opened the lid and the screen lit up. It took her a moment to realise what she was looking at. “The Harvard application portal?”  
“I thought it was about time you went to get your MBA. What you said the other night about giving up everything for me…I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s not fair that I’ve got to pursue every project that caught my eye while you’ve stayed here, holding everything together. You deserve to live your life, too.”  
She let the tears fall, her eyes scanning the now blurry page. “I can’t apply now. Not while Belle is so sick.”  
He put his arm around her, moving closer to hug her to him. “I know. But maybe later next year you can apply for 2020. Harvey, you’re too smart to waste your talent and this has been your plan since before we even met. You don’t have to worry about a thing. I’m going to look after you.”  
It meant the world to her. It had been her plan for almost thirty years. A degree from Harvard, an MBA and then her own hotel. But plans changed. Life happened. All she wanted now was to settle down and be a family, to give Belle a couple of brothers and sisters. She was only a few months from her thirty-eighth birthday and she felt that incessant ticking in her belly every day, imagining it growing fainter and fainter until it stopped. Her life hadn’t gone to plan at all. One stormy night almost thirteen years ago had seen to that.  
She realised that she was sobbing and Chris’s arms were around her as he comforted her. He thought she was happy, maybe even relieved. What she really felt was grief from the certainty that it was time to let him go. To stop putting her life on hold for him.  
She pulled away, drying her eyes on her sleeves. “Thank you. For once I don’t know what to say. I’m completely overwhelmed.”  
His hands smoothed her hair away from her face and he kissed her mouth. “You deserve it.”  
“Your turn,” she murmured, gently pushing his hands away, hiding the dismissiveness of the gesture with a smile. “Open this one first.”  
He took the gift from her hands but she saw the frown line between his brows deepen. She watched his fingers as he tore off the wrapping paper. Inside was a first edition copy of _Winnie The Pooh_. He turned it over in his hands, the gilt detail on the dark green cover glinting under the lights. Her smile became genuine as his eyes widened with surprise. “This is incredible.”  
“I knew it was missing from your collection.”  
“I’ve been looking for it forever. How did you even find it?”  
“I’ve been working on it for a while.”  
He chuckled. “This is the best. Thank you.”  
“That’s not all.” She picked up the scroll of paper and handed it to him. “This is more of a gesture than a gift.”  
He pulled off the ribbon and unfurled the papers, his eyes scanning the front page. “Petition for Change of Name of Minor?”  
She took a deep breath as she nodded and shrugged awkwardly. “Obviously it’s Belle’s decision but I thought that this lets you know that I’m okay with it.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. She’s yours, Chris, she should have your name.”  
“Harvey, stop saying shit like that. She’s ours. She should have our names. Brooks-Evans.”  
She bit her lip, holding back yet another flood of tears. “Evans-Brooks is better. Let’s break up that alliteration.”  
His grin was huge as he pulled her into another hug. “Thank you. Even if Belle doesn’t want to, it means the world to me that you’re okay with it.”  
“I wish she was here. My heart hurts so much.”  
“I know, sweetheart. Me too.”  
She closed her eyes, letting herself relax in his arms. She tried to commit everything to memory; how soft everything looked under the twinkling fairy lights and the way his body felt pressed against hers, the warm, comforting smell of his skin, the sound of his breath in her ear.  
She would have to tell him how she felt. He would never understand why they had to stop seeing each other if she didn’t. But not tonight. They had too much to do and they still had to spend time together at the hospital. The last thing she wanted was to have to go through all of that alone. She tried not to imagine how disappointed he would be that she had done the one thing he trusted her not to do.  
“I love you, Harvey.”  
For a moment, she thought he could read her mind. Her heart fluttered in anticipation before the realisation that he meant platonically sank in. The kind of love they’d had for each other for so long before they’d ruined it. “I love you, too,” she murmured, hoping he couldn’t hear the desolation in her voice.  
After they cleared away the wrapping paper, Harvey cooked pasta while Chris made a reluctant start on taking down the decorations. While she waited for the water to boil, she retrieved the pregnancy test from the linen closet and put it in her handbag. The last thing she needed was her mother to find it when she was laying the table for one of her summer soirees. She’d never hear the end of it.  
By the time she’d prepared two bowls of food, Chris had already taken down all of the lights and made a start on packing the tree ornaments. The room had that sad, New Year vibe and she had to keep reminding herself that they hadn’t even had Christmas yet. They ate in front of the TV, an ancient episode of The Golden Girls playing quietly in the background.  
“Do you still have that bottle of Aleve in the car?” Harvey asked when she couldn’t ignore the cramps shredding her insides for a moment longer.  
“Yeah. Why, headache?”  
“Cramps.”  
“Why didn’t you say something? I’ll go and get them.” Then, when he returned from the car bringing with him the tang of cold ocean air. “Let me take care of all of the clearing up. Just go and relax in bed and read or something.”  
“No, don’t be silly. I’ll just take a couple of these and I’ll be fine in a little while.”  
“I insist. I’ll be done here in an hour or two and then I can pack up the food. Just gather your things, pack your clothes and relax.”  
By the time the painkillers kicked in, Harvey had already packed her bags. She stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes for just a second. The next thing she knew, Chris was gently shaking her awake and the room looked navy blue in the early dawn light.  
“Time to go, sweetheart.”  
“It’s too early. I don’t want to,” she mumbled, curling up and pulling the covers over her head.  
Chris gently tugged them back down. “We have to. There’s a big snowstorm coming in so we need to get on the road. I packed the cars, everything’s ready to go. And we can stop at Dunkin’ to get coffee.”  
“Now you’re speaking my language. Let’s go.”  
“You get ready, I’m just going to walk around check everything’s locked up.”  
Harvey got dressed and gathered up her last few bits and pieces from the bathroom, then went down to the kitchen to find her bag. Chris walked in as she was digging around in her bag. “What have you lost?”  
“My keys. I swear to god if I’ve left them at home after all this…”  
“I have them. I packed the cars, remember?”  
She stopped rummaging and looked up at him. “I told you it was too early.”  
He smiled, handing her keys over. “Are you ready?”  
“Yeah, I guess.”  
“I know you’re disappointed, Harvs. I am, too.”  
“I imagined this week turning out very differently.”  
“Me too.” Chris clenched his jaw, looking as if he wanted to say something. Instead, he picked up his backpack. “Let’s get out of here before the snow comes.”  
Harvey hesitated for a moment as he walked out of the room. Something was wrong with him. “Wait. What’s up?”  
“Nothing,” he said, his tone was overly casual and, even though he turned to look at her, his eyes didn’t meet hers. “I’m just tired.”  
She frowned. He’d been absolutely fine the night before and she couldn’t think what could have possibly happened overnight to upset him. She decided not to push it, picking up her bag and following him to the front door. A blast of freezing air carrying the first few flakes of snow hit them as they stepped outside. Harvey hurriedly locked the door before jogging to her car and climbing inside. Chris had obviously run the engine at some point because the air that came out of the vents when she turned the ignition was already warm. If he was thinking of her getting into a cold car then surely he couldn’t be angry or upset with her?  
It preyed on her mind all the way back to Boston. They went straight to the hospital, parking next to each other in the almost deserted garage. By that point, her anxiety had built itself up to epic proportions. Having learned the painful lesson about talking in public, she waited until they were alone in the elevator to turn to him and ask, “Are we okay?”  
He looked at her and she saw something pass behind his eyes. “We’re okay, Harvey. We’re always okay.”  
She nodded and quickly turned away, facing the doors so he couldn’t see her face. Dread bubbled up inside her. She knew she felt unsettled, unsure whether or not she could trust herself. Since the phone call with Belle, she couldn’t be sure if she saw things as they actually were or if her own fear skewed her perception. But if she knew one thing with absolute certainty at that moment, it was that Chris had just lied to her.


	17. Chapter 17

“Mommy?”  
Harvey woke with a gasp. For a cruel moment, she thought she’d been dreaming but she looked over at Belle to find her looking straight back at her. She launched herself out of the chair and over to the bed. “Belle? Oh my god! I’m here, baby, I’m here.”  
It had been the longest few days of her life. If Harvey thought she had been stressed before, it had felt like a holiday compared to the stress of waiting for Belle to wake from the coma. On the day after her birthday, Mel and her team had withdrawn the drugs keeping her under and the tense wait for her to wake up had begun. At first, she had continued to sleep peacefully as she and Chris sat on opposite sides of the bed for hours at a time, waiting for the slightest hand movement or flutter of an eyelid. Then she’d had episodes of seeming to be awake and being unable to respond to anything or anyone in the room. The previous day, Harvey had been talking to Chris and Belle’s heart rate shot up. Panicked, they had called for a nurse only to be told that it was probably her response to hearing their voices.  
Now she was very definitely awake. Her eyes followed Harvey as she moved towards the bed and took Belle’s hand in both of her own. Her voice was a hoarse whisper and a tiny smile tugged at the corners of her pale lips as she said again, “Mommy.”  
“I’m here, muffin. Mommy’s here. Oh, baby girl, it’s so good to see you.” Hot tears ran down her face. “I need to go and get a doctor. And Chris is here, too. He’s in the waiting room.”  
Belle nodded and Harvey ran from the room. She grabbed the nearest nurse who immediately rushed to the phone. She half-ran to the waiting room, pushing open the door to find Chris sound asleep, sprawled out on the too-small sofa, one hand trailing on the floor. She stopped for a second, waiting for the pain in her heart to pass. They were barely talking, all under the guise of being too worried about Belle. They’d both been at the hospital non-stop for the past five days, taking it in turns to spend the night in Belle’s room waiting for her to wake up while the other got as much sleep as possible in the waiting room.  
“Chris?” She crouched down beside him, gently shaking him. “Chris?”  
“Yeah?” he said groggily, opening his eyes to look at her. For a split-second, there was nothing wrong. Then the shutters came down and his gaze was guarded. “Is everything okay?”  
“Belle’s awake.”  
It was like flicking a switch. He was up on his feet, dashing his hands through his hair as he looked around for his hoodie. “Properly awake? Is she talking?”  
“She said ‘mommy’. I woke up and she was looking at me.”  
They rushed back to the ICU to find a cluster of people around the bed. The nurses were disconnecting the last of the cables and tubes connected to Belle while a doctor checked her over. They hung back, trying to stay out of the way. Belle caught their eyes and smiled, a bigger, stronger smile than she’d managed before. She heard Chris exhale through his mouth, a sound of pure relief.  
Harvey watched as the doctor shone a light into Belle’s eyes, then helped her to sit up on the edge of the bed to check her reflexes. Eventually, the doctor came over to them. “Everything seems fine. I’m going to run a few more tests. Right now, I’d like to see her eat and drink and keep it down. Once Doctor Jones gets here, we can talk about moving her back upstairs.”  
“Thank you,” Harvey said, watching Chris walk over to Belle and bend down to kiss her forehead. She looked thrilled to see him. “What kind of tests?”  
“Nothing major. I’ve sent some bloods off and I’ll call the physiotherapist down to make sure all her motor skills are back to normal. There’s nothing to worry about.”  
She forced a smile. “Thank you.”  
After he left, she stood chewing on a thumbnail. She knew it wasn’t like a normal coma, that there was unlikely to be any lasting damage, although that didn’t stop her nerves from fraying at the thought. She stood by the window for a while, letting Chris have time with Belle. The sky had lightened to a steel grey as heavy snow clouds hung above the city, promising to deepen the snowfall they’d already had. She wondered if she and Chris could get over the blip they seemed to be having now that the stress of the coma was finally over.  
“Mom?”  
Belle’s voice startled her out of her thoughts and she turned to look at her. “Yes?”  
“Are you okay?”  
“I should be asking you that.” Expertly pushing it all down, she hitched a smile onto her face. The bed had been adjusted so that Belle sat up a little. “How are you feeling?”  
“Tired. And thirsty. My throat hurts.”  
“Let me go and ask what you can have and I’ll find you some breakfast.”  
“Wait, Mom. What day is it? Did I miss my birthday?”  
Despite everything, Chris and Harvey exchanged uncomfortable glances. “It’s the day after Christmas, sweet pea,” Chris said gently.  
Belle’s eyes filled with tears and she looked confusedly between Chris and Harvey. “No,” she whispered. “I missed Christmas?”  
Even though Harvey had known her reaction would be heartbreaking, that still didn’t prepare her for how much it hurt. “We’ll make it up to you, I promise. As soon as you’re well enough we’ll have a special day just for you.”  
She sniffled bravely. “Okay.”  
“I’ll be right back, muffin.” She went outside to find a nurse only to almost bump into one carrying a tray bearing applesauce, Jell-O and a juice box. “Ah, I was about to ask what we could give her to eat.”  
The nurse handed the tray over with a smile. “Tell her to go slow but let her eat as much or as little as she wants. Call us if she vomits, otherwise we’ll try not to disturb you too much before her doctor gets here.”  
Harvey went back into the room to find Chris showing Belle her appendectomy wound. She was giggling at something he’d said and they both looked up at her. Although Belle brightened, either at the sight of her mom or her breakfast, Harvey saw the laughter die in Chris’s eyes and he looked away, busying himself by taking his phone from his pocket.  
How she kept the smile on her face, she didn’t know. She’d be damned if she was going to either cry in front of Belle or let Chris ruin this day for her. Although she couldn’t help wondering what it was that she could have possibly done. He’d been fine the night they’d opened their presents and the next morning he’d been increasingly stand-offish. What had happened while she’d been asleep?  
Later that afternoon, she got the opportunity to find out. Mel arrived not long after lunch. By then Belle had eaten two sandwiches, got up and walked around the room a couple of times, and even taken herself off to the bathroom. Mel was thrilled with how well Belle was bouncing back and immediately made arrangements to move her back upstairs. She sent Harvey and Chris up to the relatives’ room to wait for Belle to be settled back in.  
Chris paced the room, trying his hardest not to make eye contact with her. Eventually, she could stand it no longer. “Chris, what exactly have I done?”  
He glanced at her, not looking at her when he spoke. “It’s more what you haven’t done.”  
“What? Just tell me because I can’t think what has got you so upset between us opening presents and leaving the Cape next morning.”  
“Can’t you? Well, you went to bed and I packed everything up and then packed it all into our cars. Into _your_ car. For which I needed the key.”   
The realisation hit her hard. She’d forgotten about the box in her bag, now squashed and battered as she pushed more and more half-eaten candy bars and bottles of water on top of it. She closed her eyes, wondering why it hadn’t occurred to her as soon as he started acting weird. “You went in my bag for my keys and you saw the pregnancy test.”  
He nodded, running his fingers through his hair. “You want to tell me what’s going on with that?”  
She shrugged. “There’s nothing to tell. I thought I might be pregnant. I was a couple of weeks late. I didn’t get to take a test because my period turned up and I didn’t know if I was late, or… We’d been drinking a lot and I took those sleeping pills, so I didn’t really want to find out…” Her voice trailed off and she swallowed, willing the tears away.  
“Why didn’t you tell me?”  
“Belle’s been at death’s door, it didn’t seem important!”  
“We don’t have secrets from each other, Harvey.”  
“It’s not a fucking secret!” she snapped. “I was late. I was throwing up. I thought maybe I might be pregnant. Do you want me to tell you every time my period is late? Because that’s pretty much every month. We can share a calendar on our phones.”  
“Don’t be like that,” he said wearily.  
“Like what?”  
He waved a hand, encompassing her entire being. “Snarky.”  
“I don’t understand why you’re being such a dick about it. You’ve been ignoring me for days and for what? Because I didn’t tell you that I didn’t take a pregnancy test?”  
“I’m sorry,” he said in a tone which clearly said he wasn’t sorry at all, “that I think I have a right to know that my best friend might be carrying my baby!”  
Harvey trembled and her skin felt hot and prickly. She desperately wanted to lash out, to hurt someone as much as she was hurting inside. “I’m not your best friend, Chris, I’m your fucking courtesan!”  
His eyes widened and he took half a step back, as if caught off-balance. “Harvey…I have never…”  
“I am, quite literally, your port in a storm. You come home and treat me like a surrogate wife, living out your little happy family fantasies, and when you’ve had enough you fuck off to play the eligible bachelor with your friends. You always say that I’m the smartest person you know but I’m not. I’m the biggest, dumbest idiot for letting you treat me like that for thirteen fucking years.” She snatched up her bag and coat, heading for the door.  
“Harvey, wait! Please—”  
The door swung shut behind her as she rushed along the corridor, her breath coming hard and fast, burning her throat. She jabbed the button for the elevator and rode down to the parking garage, rummaging in her bag for her keys. “Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_!” Chris had taken them the previous evening to get her bag from the car and he hadn’t given them back. There was no way in hell she was going back up there to get them.  
She leaned against her car for a moment, trying to get her breathing under control. If she could control her breaths, she could control the tears. She walked slowly back to the elevator and took it to the first floor, making her way through the main entrance. The small press invasion they’d experienced had given up already, realising that Chris wasn’t going to be stupid enough to walk in and out of a public entrance. She left the hospital unnoticed.  
Freezing air hit her in the face, taking her breath away. She wished she had a thicker coat and better shoes than her battered Converse. She hadn’t been outside of the hospital for five whole days and she wasn’t at all prepared for how bitter the weather had become. She pulled her coat around her, turning up the collar and putting her head down. She needed to get somewhere warm where she could sit and process everything and decide what she wanted to do next.  
The sidewalks were pretty much clear and she walked easily through the city streets to a small deli she sometimes went to during her lunch breaks at the hotel. She ordered a large coffee and grabbed a seat at the back of the shop, wanting to be unseen and out of the way.  
She and Chris never fell out. They argued from time to time, usually over nothing, and they soon forgot about it and went back to normal. This felt different. Like a wedge. And it was so dumb. Why was he so worked up over an unused pregnancy test?  
Her phone rang in her bag and her heart jolted, wondering if it was Chris. It wasn’t. An unknown number flashed up on the screen and she answered.  
“Hello, I’m calling for Ms Brooks. This is Doctor Rasul from Boston Children’s Hospital.”  
“This is Harvey Brooks.”  
“I have some good news for you. Your son is a preliminary bone marrow match for your daughter.”  
Her heart sank like a stone. “I don’t have a son. You must be confusing her with someone else.”  
“Oh. Um…” She could hear rustling and the tapping of a keyboard. “Who is Chris?”  
Her heart gave a cautious flutter. “Her father.”  
“Oh! I apologise. It’s just that it’s incredibly rare for a parent to be a complete match. They share 12/12 markers and we’re only looking for a 10/10 match.”  
“Wait, Chris can be Belle’s donor?”  
“There are still some more tests to run. I’d still say it’s very likely at this stage. Is he with you?”  
“No. He’s at the hospital with Belle right now.”  
“Excellent. I’ll call her doctor and see if I can speak to him.”  
She could barely take in a word he was saying. She tried sniffing back the tears but there was no stopping them. “Thank you.”  
She hung up. Her first instinct was to call Chris. She wanted to be the one to tell him. Tears came hot and fast. Chris was a match. He would be Belle’s donor. She was going to be okay. Relief flooded through her, so strong that it seemed as hard to bear as the waiting and the worry. Her anger tempered the almost overwhelming urge to call him. It was his fault she wasn’t there with him and Belle to celebrate this news. Let him find out from someone else.  
The waitress brought over her coffee, took one look at her tear-stained face, went back behind the counter and returned with a stack of napkins. Harvey gave her a watery smile and tried to dry her eyes. The tears kept coming. Her coffee grew cold and the waitress started clearing tables and stacking chairs.  
Reluctantly, Harvey pulled on her coat and headed back outside. Now it was dark it was even colder and a good couple of inches of dry, powdery snow had fallen. She pulled her phone from her bag. She needed to speak to Belle, to explain why she left. As she scrolled to Belle’s number, her battery symbol flashed empty and her phone switched off. She looked in her bag for her charger, discarding empty water bottles into a nearby trash can along with the unfinished candy bars. Her hand brushed the pregnancy test and she grabbed it and threw it viciously into the trash, too. Her charger wasn’t in her bag. Now she had no keys and no means of contacting anyone.  
She began to walk, crossing the street so she walked towards the oncoming traffic, looking for the orange light of a cab. The traffic was heavy and slow-moving as she headed for Commonwealth Avenue, which she figured would be the best place to find a cab. The snow fell steadily as she trudged along. Her mind flitted between explosive happiness that Belle wasn’t going to wait around for a transplant, that they weren’t going to have to worry about the increased risks that came with an unrelated donor, to anger at Chris and his stupidity.  
Maybe he was angry with the fact that she could have been pregnant. Maybe he thought she had the birth control sorted and had been shocked to find out that she, in fact, didn’t. Maybe it had been an uncomfortable reminder for him that they needed to be more careful. Maybe he was angry because the last thing he wanted was a baby with her.  
She realised she’d walked a lot further than she’d intended, almost up to Boston Common. Her feet were freezing and wet in her canvas shoes and her fingers felt as if they were about to drop off. She took one more look around her but there wasn’t a vacant cab to be seen in either direction.  
She found a bench, cleared off the snow and sat down. She was out of options and it was way too cold to be outside. The hospital was too far in the shoes she had on and there was nowhere else for her to go. She huddled inside her coat and cried. She had no idea how long she sat there, occasionally shaking the snow from her hair and shoulders. It felt like an eternity.  
“Harvey?”  
She looked up, blinking away the tears that blurred her vision. “Guy…”  
“What on earth is the matter?” He crouched down beside her, digging in his pocket and coming out with a pristine white handkerchief which he handed to her. “Why are you sitting out here in this weather?”  
“Both valid questions.” She dried her eyes on the handkerchief. It smelled of his cologne, something citrusy, not too sweet. It was nice. “It’s been one of those days.”  
“Can I be of assistance?”  
“My phone’s dead. Can you please call me a cab?”  
“My car is parked just around the corner.”  
“I need to get home. It’s about twenty miles out of your way.”  
“I’ve got nowhere else to be.” He held out a hand to help her to her feet. “You’re freezing.”  
“I know.”  
He unwrapped the scarf from his neck and gently laid it around hers, tying it securely. “There.”  
Harvey dropped her head, breathing in the smell of him that clung to the soft fabric. Her stomach twisted. “Thank you.”  
He smiled and offered her his arm. “Would you like to talk about it?”  
“I suspect I will talk about it at great length. Are you sure you’re up for it?”  
“Absolutely.”  
As promised, his car was around the next corner. Once he’d put her address into the GPS and the car had heated up enough to stop her teeth from chattering, she said, “I’m so happy you found me. I didn’t know how the hell I was going to get out of there.”  
“What’s going on, Harvey? Is it your daughter?”  
“No. Well, yes. Kind of. It’s everything, really.”  
“I’m glad we got that cleared up.”  
She sighed heavily. He was going to think she was crazy. “Okay, I’ll start from the beginning but you’ll have to keep up. Chris is Belle’s dad and I adopted her.”  
The car swerved across to the next lane as Guy’s head whipped around to look at her. “Shit! Sorry. You’re not her birth mom?”  
“No. Her birth mom wanted to put her up for adoption so, rather than have her go to strangers and Chris lose all of his rights, I adopted her.”  
“Jesus, Harvey. I’ve got friends I’d bury bodies for but I wouldn’t adopt their children. How long have you known him? I’m guessing for a while before you adopted his baby?”  
“Over twenty years now. We met in high school. Chris is – was – like a brother to me. It seemed like the best option for all involved. I adopted her and let people think she was mine.”  
“How did you manage that?”  
“I went to live in California for a few months. Came back with a tan and a newborn baby and nobody was any the wiser. You do realise that this is the first time I’ve said any of this out loud? I’ve never told anyone the whole truth before.”  
“I am honoured.”  
Harvey looked at him sharply and judged him to be sincere. “I told her she was adopted a few years ago and she took it like a champ. She only found out about Chris a couple of weeks ago and that didn’t go so well.”  
“From all of the news articles I’ve read, I assumed that she was yours and Chris’s.”  
“I think most people do.” She shrugged. “It’s not important for the wider population to understand.”  
Guy looked poleaxed. They drove in silence for a couple of miles before he asked, “How was it? With Chris being away so much? Doesn’t he live in LA?”  
“Chris has been great. There were times when things were rough for me and he wasn’t here. For the most part he’s been a great secret dad. He mostly lives here although he spends time in LA. Even when he’s away, everyone’s always supportive of us, even his family, even though they didn’t know she was his until recently. I’ve had a lot more help than the average single mom. And Belle’s a great kid. She’s been really easy to raise.”  
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You adopted a baby and let everyone think she was yours for twelve years, bringing her up single-handedly while her biological father pursued his, admittedly very successful, movie career, and you constantly lied and covered up for him, even to your own families?”  
“I wouldn’t say I brought her up single-handedly. As I said, Chris has done a lot. Apart from that, that’s pretty much it.”  
“If nobody knew, how did the story get out? Every time I go online it seems there’s a new picture or story about you.”  
“The parking garage video. Chris clearly admits he has a kid, the rest of it is a case of one plus one equalling nine. They’ve filled in the blanks with lies. Mostly because it’s pretty big news that Captain America has a secret lovechild and it’s worth a lot of clicks. I think they’re trying to draw one of us into telling the truth.”  
“Is that going to happen?”  
“I think Chris is considering a soft interview – that means an interview with a sympathetic host who won’t ask difficult questions. I know he’s hoping to trade off the ignominy of having to do an interview in the first place with raising awareness for the marrow donor program.”  
He shook his head in disbelief. “You really are going through a lot.”  
“Today we found out that Chris’s bone marrow is a match for Belle. We ended up arguing over something…something so stupid. I left the hospital without my keys and I’m too stubborn to go back. I couldn’t find a cab because of the snow and I couldn’t call one because my battery is dead. That’s pretty much where you came in.”  
“That’s great news, though, about Chris? Belle’s going to get her transplant?”  
“Yeah. It’s wonderful.”  
“What did you argue about?”  
Harvey barely entertained the thought of telling him. It was too big a can of worms to open. She already thought she’d said too much and scared him off. “Nothing really. We’re both so tired and stressed out. I’m sure we’ll be okay in a few days.”  
As they neared her house, Guy got to the most important and pressing question. “If you haven’t got your keys, how are you going to get into your house?”  
“My neighbour has a spare set. I’m hoping she’ll be home.”  
The lights were on at her neighbour’s house and she had Guy wait at her place while she ran across the street to pick them up. The snowplows hadn’t made it along her street yet and the snow was easily over her ankles. Her breath clouded in front of her as she trudged up the path and rang the doorbell.  
Once she’d secured the keys, she went back to Guy and unlocked the house. It was freezing inside. “I’m sorry it’s so cold. I’ve been staying with Chris for the past couple of weeks. I probably don’t have much to offer you in the way of food and drink, either. I’ve probably got a beer if you’d like one? Or wine?”  
“No, thank you, I need a clear head to drive back. Do you have any soda? Maybe we could get a pizza?”  
So she hadn’t scared him off so much that he didn’t want to stay for dinner. She smiled. “Let me take your coat. Make yourself comfortable in the living room. I’ll turn on the heat.”  
She went to the laundry room and dug around in the linen basket for a towel. She pulled off her soggy shoes and socks, dried her frozen feet and found a clean pair of socks to put on. When she returned to the living room with a glass of wine for her and a lone can of Coke she’d found in the back of the fridge for Guy, she chose to sit in the armchair rather than on the couch with him.  
“You’ve got a lovely home. Have you lived here long?”  
“Pretty much since I graduated from college.”  
“Harvard?”  
She nodded, the memory of Chris and the MacBook and the way he’d kissed her under the Christmas lights floating across her mind. She pushed it away. “My parents moved to Massachusetts when I was fourteen so I could concentrate on getting into Harvard.”  
“That’s why you’re called Harvey!” he exclaimed.  
She laughed a little. “Yeah. That was Chris.”  
“It’s so strange to me that you can be such casual friends with someone so famous. I know famous people have friends too and they had lives before they became famous, but you never really meet anyone who says ‘Oh yeah, my best friend is Brad Pitt’.”  
“Probably because it leads to requests for autographs or memorabilia or people trying to get into your phone to get his number.”  
“No! Tell me that’s never happened?”  
“I wish I could.”  
Guy took a sip of Coke, placing the can squarely on a coaster on the coffee table. She didn’t expect any less from a man who carried a functional handkerchief. “How is Belle doing?”  
“She’s good. They put her in a coma for a few days because she had sepsis and then we found out it was appendicitis. She woke up this morning.”  
“Harvey…” he said quietly, his brow creased in concern, “how are you getting through all of this?”  
“I honestly don’t know.” She stared down into her wine glass, swirling the pink liquid around and around. “I try not to think about it. If I think about it too much it’s as if I’m being pulled into a black hole. I didn’t cry for two weeks. I feel paralyzed by it. You want to leap into action, to do something to help your child, to make them better. Then you realise there’s nothing you can do. Just sit there and wait and try to be strong for everyone around you.”  
“Who’s being strong for you?”  
“Chris,” she said immediately, without thinking about whether or not she should. “He’s been wonderful. I’m sure he tries not to cry in front of me even though I know this is devastating him just as much as it’s devastating me. The other night I found Belle’s favourite soft toy under his pillow…” She ground to a halt as she realised what she’d said.  
“You sleep in his bed?”  
She looked up at him, resigned. “Yeah. I sleep in his bed.”  
“Do you sleep _with_ him?”  
“It’s…complicated.” She’d said too much. She wasn’t ready to vocalise her relationship with Chris or to let anyone else in.  
“That’s a shame.”  
Harvey felt the air of possibility that hung between them grow stale and die away. He no longer believed anything could happen between them and, if she was honest with herself, she felt the same way.  
A blast of cold air made them both swing around to look into the hallway. The front door clicked shut and Chris appeared in the door, a bottle in one hand and a bunch of keys in the other. He looked at Guy and then at Harvey. “What’s he doing here?”  
“What are _you_ doing here?”  
“I came to apologise,” he said scathingly, holding up the bottle of champagne he clutched in his hand. “I thought you’d want to celebrate. I had your keys so I brought your car back and I saw a strange car on the drive and…”  
“In the kitchen.” Harvey glared, getting to her feet. As she reached the door, she turned back to Guy. “I’ll be back in a minute.”  
She followed Chris into the kitchen and firmly closed the door behind them before rounding on him. “Why are you here?”  
“I already told you. I wanted to apologise.”  
“Apologise and go. I’m really not in the mood for you right now.”  
He glared at her, rubbing a thumb over his lips. “Why are you being like this?”  
She laughed bitterly. “Me? You’ve been an absolute dick since you saw that _unused_ pregnancy test. I could understand you losing your shit if I’d peed on it and there was a little plus sign and I hadn’t said anything to you, but this stick is in an unopened box. I thought that would make you happy!”  
“You should have told me.”  
“There was nothing to tell!” she shouted, then remembered Guy was in the next room. “Chris, this isn’t the time. You need to leave.”  
“Well I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I’d be interrupting date night. You’re just full of secrets.”  
“Secrets?! You want to talk about fucking secrets?”  
“I thought now wasn’t the time?”  
“You think this is funny?” Pure fury coursed through her veins. “I’ve kept every single one of your shitty secrets. I’ve looked people in the eye and lied for you for twelve fucking years.”  
He looked at her warily. “It was our secret, Harvey.”  
“No, it fucking wasn’t,” she hissed. “You cheated on your girlfriend. You got someone pregnant. You fucked up. I cleaned up your mess. You created this entire situation and everything I’ve done, I did for you. And you know what the worst part of all of this is? You don’t even notice. You don’t notice that I don’t date, that I don’t take time for myself, that I haven’t built my own life.”  
“I’ve never stopped you—”  
“Haven’t you? Really? Why don’t you think about that for a second? I can’t let Guy sit there listening to us argue.”  
She left the kitchen and went back to the living room, trying to let go of her anger for long enough to say goodbye. “I am so sorry.”  
Guy got to his feet. “I asked you if I’d be stepping on his toes and you said no.”  
“Because you’re not!”  
“Then why do you have a jealous man brooding in your kitchen?”  
Harvey opened her mouth to reply and nothing came out. Guy didn’t know Chris, he didn’t know how he reacted. “He’s not jealous, it’s…”  
“Complicated?”  
She dropped her head, staring down at her feet. “I guess.”  
“I should go.”  
They went out into the hall where Guy pulled on his coat and Harvey returned his scarf. “Thank you for rescuing me.”  
“It was my pleasure. Look, let’s leave it like this; if there’s anything I can do for you at all, if you want someone to have a drink with, or things become uncomplicated,” his eyes travelled over her shoulder to the glowering figure in her kitchen doorway then back to her, “or you want a job, you call me. Whether that’s tomorrow or in six months’ time. How does that sound?”  
She gave him a sad smile. “More than fair.”  
“Goodbye, Harvey. Take care of yourself.” He kissed her cheek, lingering for just a second.  
“You too.” She closed the door behind him and leaned against it, waiting until she heard his car drive away. She felt a disproportionate sense of loss for the man she’d only had coffee with. She turned to look at Chris. She was tired. Too tired to yell and rage at him. “Do you want me to drive you home?”  
“I’ll walk.”  
“You can’t walk in this, you don’t even—No, you know what? Fine. Walk home.” Harvey opened the front door and stood back. He looked like he wanted to argue. She watched him struggle with something that he obviously wanted to say. In the end, he chose not to say anything and walked out of the door without even looking at her. She closed it behind him and slid down to the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest.  
Something had broken between them. More than just a pregnancy test and the threat of another man in her life. They’d never argued like this before. She’d never been this angry with him. It felt… How did it feel? Her blood felt hot and heavy in her veins and she had the sick, twisting feeling of anxiety in her gut. It felt real. It felt permanent.


	18. Chapter 18

“What are you doing here?”  
Harvey looked up from her book. Belle’s voice was hoarse and thick with sleep. “Where else would I be?”  
“I told you to go. I don’t want people around me.”  
She put her book to one side and leaned on the edge of the bed. “I’m not people.”  
“I don’t want you to see me like this.”  
“If I can’t see you like this, who can?” She smoothed her hand over Belle’s forehead. She was on her final day of chemotherapy and ATG before her bone marrow transplant. It had been four days of hell. Tomorrow, she would have total body irradiation while Chris donated his bone marrow, then the day after was literally called day zero. Belle’s life, hopefully, began again. “I don’t want to leave you all alone.”  
The chemo hadn’t been so bad. Maybe because it was the treatment that they all feared the most, Harvey had thought the side effects would be awful. But Belle had been sick once on the first day and fine afterwards. It was the ATG that was the worst, making her sick with terrible diarrhea, making her limp and unresponsive.  
She hadn’t wanted any visitors but how could Harvey leave her like that?  
“Mom, please…” Belle choked and heaved and Harvey grabbed a disposable sick bowl from a stack on the table and got it under her mouth just in time.  
“It’s okay, muffin. Just relax.” She gave her a cup of water and held the bowl while Belle rinsed her mouth, then gave her a cap of mouthwash. She couldn’t brush her teeth at all now, her gums bled profusely every time.  
Belle shook her head, laying back down on the pillows, exhausted. “I don’t want this anymore. I just want to feel normal.”  
“I know, sweetheart. I know. It’s just a couple more days and then it’ll be over.” She took the sick bowl into the bathroom and disposed of the contents then threw the bowl into the bin before washing her hands.  
When she sat back beside the bed, Belle curled up under the covers. “Make it go away.”  
“I would if I could, Belle-Belle. I wish I could…” Harvey swallowed down tears, frantically thinking of something – anything – that would take her mind off of how shitty she felt. Her eye fell on Mrs Bunny, just peeking out from beneath the pillow. “When did you get Mrs Bunny back?”  
“Back from where?”  
“Well,” Harvey took the toy out from beneath the pillow, giving her a little shake, “the last time I saw her she was under a different pillow.”  
“Where?” Belle frowned. “Which pillow?”  
“She was at your dad’s house. Under his pillow. I think he took her when they put you in the coma. He must have returned her before you knew she was missing.”  
“Mom… I have something I want to ask you.”  
“Go on.”  
“You have to promise you won’t lie to me.”  
“I promise, muffin. What is it?”  
Belle took a deep breath, her big blue eyes looking even bigger in her pale face. “What’s up with you and Chris? It’s been weeks now and you’re either ignoring each other or being overly polite.”  
It had been three weeks, to be exact. To the day. The immediate aftermath of their falling out had been fraught and anyone who came into contact with them noticed the atmosphere. It didn’t help that they had been in a period of limbo, awaiting further test results that would confirm Chris’s suitability as Belle’s donor. Harvey tried to be civil and he reciprocated but things weren’t the same between them. Belle, of course, felt it the most. She was utterly perplexed as to why her parents suddenly couldn’t look each other in the eye.  
As usual, when she thought about Chris, tears rushed to the surface. Despite the anger and frustration that she felt, she missed him. She missed him just being beside her for her to talk to or confide in or to hear him laugh. She missed his presence in her bed, the safety she felt while curled up in his arms. “I can’t tell you everything. You asked me not to lie and I won’t but I can’t tell you the whole truth. We argued about something…something kind of dumb. Now I’m angry with him and he’s angry with me and I think we’ve reached the point where we can’t be friends anymore.”  
“Is it really that bad?”  
She shook her head and then shrugged. “I don’t think that it’s that bad but he does and that makes me angry…” She shifted slightly and said flatly, “It feels like we can’t go back.”  
“No!”  
“It happens, sweetheart,” she said firmly. “Friends aren’t always forever.”  
“But it’s _Chris_, Mom.” Belle’s eyes filled with tears and Harvey had to look away. “Like, I just found out he’s my father and now you’re not friends with him.”  
“It won’t affect you.”  
“It does affect me. I want my mom and my dad. I want things to be exactly as they were.”  
_ My mom and my dad_. She called him dad. Harvey wiped tears away with the tips of her fingers. “So do I.”  
“Are you still in love with him?”  
Harvey hesitated but looked Belle in the eye. “Yes. I am.”  
“Then why don’t you just tell him?”  
“I can’t do that,” she said, shaking her head. “There are things that I can’t tell you but I promise you it’s not what he wants to hear from me.”  
“You’re his best friend. You’re my mom.”  
“I think he’d be even more angry with me because of those things. We…we have an understanding. Being in love with him is exactly what he didn’t want to happen.”  
“That’s just stupid. You can’t control who you fall in love with. We love who we love.”  
She couldn’t hold in her laugh. Schooled in love by her own child. “You’re twelve, where are you getting this from?”  
“_Before We Go_.”  
Harvey shook her head, exasperated. “If we’ve reached the stage where you’re quoting your dad’s movies at me…”  
“It’s true though.”  
“Okay, yes, it’s true,” she conceded. “We love who we love. The heart wants what it wants. But _Before We Go_ teaches us that there’s not always a happy ending. Life isn’t a Disney movie. We have to learn to adapt, to change course, to find alternate routes to our happiness.”  
Belle opened her mouth for the rebuttal but the door opened and a nurse walked in carrying a tray. “Good afternoon, Belle. How are you feeling?”  
“Horrible.”  
“Well, hopefully, I’ve got some goodies here that will make you feel a little better.”  
Harvey got up so the nurse could get to the bed. She stretched her arms up and went to stand by the window. Boston still nestled under its blanket of snow, although the magic of it had dwindled now that the Christmas lights had been taken down for another year. The stress of the past few days sat heavily across her shoulders and down her back, her muscles tense and stiff.  
The nurse gave Belle a plethora of drugs. Something to stop the diarrhea, something to stop the sickness, something to reduce stomach acid, antihistamines, pain relief… Harvey watched anxiously. Even though she knew that without this treatment, Belle would die, she couldn’t help worrying about the long-term effects all of this might have on her still-developing body.  
Once the nurse left, Belle adjusted the bed so she sat up a little and Harvey straightened her covers. “Mom?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Can we shave my head?”  
Harvey’s poor heart, that never seemed to beat in regular time between all of the pounding, fluttering, plummeting and leaping, seemed to stop for a moment. “A-are you sure that’s what you want?”  
She nodded, twirling the end of her braid around her finger. “Chris asked me if I’d like him to get me a wig made. He said he has a friend who can make me any wig I want. It’s going to fall out anyway and I don’t know if I can face seeing it come out in clumps.”  
For some reason, this upset Harvey more than almost anything they’d been through in the past weeks. She tried her hardest to hide her tears. “Sure. I…” She faltered, her voice failing as a sob fought its way up her throat.  
“Mom?” Belle’s voice rose in alarm. “What’s wrong?”  
“N-nothing,” she stammered, bolting into the bathroom and shutting the door behind her.  
She sank to the floor, cramming her fist into her mouth as tears overwhelmed her. She tried not to make a sound, not wanting to scare Belle anymore than she already had. They wouldn’t stop coming and her shoulders shook uncontrollably.  
“Harvey? Are you okay?”  
To her surprise, it was Lisa’s voice following a quiet tap on the door. She tried to say she was okay but no words would come.  
“Harvey? I’m coming in…” The door opened just enough for Lisa to catch sight of her huddled on the floor. She hurried inside and closed the door. “What’s the matter, honey? What happened?”  
She shook her head, trying to force her voice to work. “I d-don’t know.”  
“You’ve been overdoing it again. When was the last time you went home?”  
She shrugged helplessly. All the days and nights seemed to have merged into one. “What day is it?”  
Lisa sighed, her brow furrowed in concern. “You need to go home.”  
Harvey got to her feet, looking at her wrecked face in the mirror. “I-I can’t. Belle…”  
“Will be just fine. I’m here, Shanna’s here, Chris is on his way. We won’t leave her alone. You can’t drive home in this state. I’ll take you downstairs and put you in a cab.”  
Harvey had no choice but to acquiesce. They went back into the room where Shanna sat beside the bed, showing Belle pictures of Dodger on her phone.  
“Are you okay, Mom?”  
Harvey paused from gathering up her things. She looked at Lisa, knowing if she spoke it would just come out as a sob. “Your mom’s just tired, honey. She’s going to go home and have a sleep and be back first thing tomorrow.”  
Belle looked between her grandmother and her mom, obviously confused. “Call me before bedtime?”  
Harvey nodded, managing a small smile as she bent to kiss Belle’s cheek. Lisa led her out of the room and down the corridor to the elevator. She kept her head down. She didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone. Mercifully, they got into an empty elevator but as soon as the doors hissed shut, Lisa turned to her.  
“You were doing so much better at looking after yourself. What happened?”  
She could only shake her head helplessly. Lisa sighed and stroked her back as they rode down to the lobby and walked outside. It was already getting dark and lots of the support staff were leaving for the day so the main entrance was busier than usual. It still only took Lisa a second to hail a cab and deposit Harvey in the back.  
“Have you got cash?”  
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “Please don’t leave Belle.”  
“We won’t. Make sure you eat, shower and sleep.” Lisa gave her hand a final squeeze, gave the driver her address and closed the door.  
Harvey settled back in the seat and gazed sightlessly out of the window. She didn’t know why she was suddenly so upset. She and Belle had talked at length about her losing her hair. When they had the first transplant meeting with Mel and Doctor Avery, the transplant specialist, it had just been them, her and Chris. They had taken them through the entire process and told them, very bluntly, about all the side effects and what they could expect as they shut down Belle’s immune system and killed off the little bone marrow she had remaining. The first point Mel had impressed upon them that it was almost certain the chemotherapy would make Belle’s hair fall out and it usually happened around fourteen days after the first dose.  
Harvey had told Belle herself and held her as she cried and they agreed that, when Belle was ready, they would shave her head. For some reason, hearing her say it had flicked a switch inside Harvey, even though she had known it would be coming. It wasn’t the loss of Belle’s hair that upset her, it was the loss of what it represented; the hours she spent brushing and styling it, the time they spent together while she braided it or twisted it or tied it up. What would they do with that time now?  
When the cab dropped her off, she trudged up the path to her front door and let herself in. The house was dark, quiet and cold. She leaned back on the door for a while, trying to gather her strength to walk up the stairs. She went into the bathroom, opening cupboards and drawers to find the clippers. She hadn’t seen or used them for years and she hoped they still worked. She found the zip-up case and opened it up. They still looked brand new and all of the combs were tucked into individual pouches. The battery was dead, though, so she plugged in the charger and left them on the side.  
She remembered Lisa’s instructions, to eat, shower and sleep, so she went down to the kitchen. The fridge was almost empty but she had a whole carton of eggs so she made herself scrambled eggs and sat and ate them in the silent kitchen. It had been almost eight weeks since Belle had last been in the house. It felt like it had forgotten her, without her things laying around and her music playing and YouTube videos on every TV. Harvey never seemed to watch TV anymore, or listen to music.  
She rinsed her plate at the sink and returned to the fridge, taking out a bottle of wine and draining it into a glass. She sipped at it as she headed back upstairs to shower. In the bathroom, a light flashed on the clippers and Harvey picked them up, feeling the weight in her hands as she flicked the power switch. The intense vibration startled her at first. As she looked down at them, she realised what she had to do.   
The first cut was easy. She gasped as her hair fell away, looking in the mirror at the short hair left behind. She cut a bit more, then a bit more. Her hair tumbled to the floor as tears misted her eyes once again. She wiped her eyes and carried on but, somehow, got too ambitious and ended up stalling the clippers with a big tangle of hair.  
“Shit,” she murmured, trying to pull the hair free but only succeeding in almost ripping it from her scalp. “Shit!” She started to panic, tugging harder at the clump of hair.  
“Harvey?”  
She stopped dead, sure she had imagined the voice. She held her breath, listening to the familiar rhythm of footsteps on the stairs. She watched the doorway in the mirror over her shoulder, waiting for him to appear.  
“Harvey?” Chris stood in the doorway. He leant against the frame, shock etched onto his features. “What have you done?”  
She looked at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were on the tendrils of hair that snaked across the bathroom floor. “I…”  
He marched inside and gently took the clippers from her hands before carefully detangling the snarl-up and turning them off. “What the fuck, Harvey?”  
All she could do was cry. She had no words, no explanation. She leant against the vanity and sobbed. After a moment, she felt his hands on her shoulders. He turned her around to face him and wrapped her in his arms. This only made her cry even harder. She had no idea how long they stood there but when her tears finally subsided, she’d left a sizeable wet patch on the shoulder of his t-shirt. He reached over to the vanity and handed her a wad of tissue.  
While she dried her eyes and blew her nose, Chris ran his fingers through what was left of her hair. “You should have put it in a braid first and cut it off, then clipped it.” He guided her to the edge of the bathtub and made her sit down, then reached for a brush and set about gathering up the longer parts of her hair.  
Harvey didn’t say anything, just let him brush her remaining hair into a ponytail and cut it off. He picked up the clippers and adjusted the comb. He sighed deeply as he turned them on. She found a spot on the tiled floor and stared at it as he ran the clippers over her head. It didn’t take long. When he turned them back off, he took a step back and looked at her. “You are so beautiful.”  
He said it seriously, meaningfully, without a perky smile designed to cheer her up. She dropped her head, which felt strangely light, and stared into her lap. She couldn’t look at him. It hurt too much.  
“Harvey,” his voice was so gentle she couldn’t bear it. He took her hand and pulled her up beside him, his other hand under her chin, forcing her eyes up to his. “Look in the mirror, sweetheart.”  
She shook her head, dislodging a tear from her eye. “No.”  
His gaze went to her hair, his hands following, his fingers softly grazing over the stubble. “It’s like velvet.”  
His touch caused sensations she’d never felt before, shooting down her spin in unfamiliar jolts, making her shiver. “Chris…”  
For a moment, it seemed as if he would kiss her. His eyes flicked between hers and her lips several times. He looked at her as if the past few weeks had never happened. But he looked away, picking up the clippers and placing them back in her hands. “Now me.”  
“But –”  
“Now me,” he repeated firmly.  
He took her place on the edge of the bath. Harvey tentatively combed her fingers through his hair then, swallowing hard, she turned on the clippers. At least she couldn’t screw it up, all she had to do was push it slowly through his hair. It only took a few minutes for his hair to join hers on the floor. She stood back, making sure the hairline around his sideburns was even on both sides.  
“Done,” she said quietly, putting the clippers down.  
Chris got up, running his hands over his head as he looked in the mirror. “Good job.”  
She frowned, looking at him in confusion. “Chris, what are you doing here?”  
He took her face in his hands again, his eyes roaming over her hair and her face. “This,” he said softly. Then he kissed her. 


	19. Chapter 19

It was soft and warm and everything she’d been yearning for. Like putting on a favourite sweater or curling up in front of the fire. Her body ached with longing for him. Somehow, she mustered her strength and pulled away. “No.”  
Chris looked shocked but he dropped his hands and took a step back. “I’m sorry.”  
She shrugged, picking up a towel and wiping off the loose hairs that were beginning to make her itch. “I need to change my top.”  
“Do you have one of mine or did you burn them all?”  
She gave him a withering look and went out to the closet. She found one of his t-shirts and threw it to him before pulling off her own top and swapping it for a clean one. “What are you doing here?” she asked again, trying not to look at his bare chest or bulging biceps as he changed his t-shirt. “Did your mom send you?”  
“No.” He shook his head. “I had an interesting conversation with Belle.”  
“Belle?”  
“I was on my way to the hospital when she called. She was worried about you and made me promise to turn around and come straight here.”  
Harvey made a mental note to have words with her daughter. “As you can see, I’m fine.”  
“Right. And shaving all your hair off was a calm, rational, well thought out decision?”  
She shrugged irritably, her hand unconsciously going to her head to touch her hair. It felt thicker than she was expecting, and softer. “I’m okay. Thank you for your help. You can go now.”  
He made no effort to move. In fact, he folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “I’m not going anywhere. We need to talk.”  
“The time to talk has passed, Chris. We can’t slip back into the way things used to be.” She walked towards the bedroom door, wanting to be away from the bed and the memories of everything that had happened between them between its sheets.  
“Wait.” He grabbed her hand, pulling her round to face him again. “Harvey, please… Let’s not throw it all away because we’re both too stubborn to listen and too afraid to open ourselves up by admitting the truth. I just want to talk and if at the end, when we’ve both said everything we have to say, you still want me to go, I will go.”  
She frowned up at him. “What do you mean, admitting the truth?”  
“Come and sit down and I’ll tell you.”  
Harvey eyed the bed. It was the last place she wanted to be. She wouldn’t have the strength to resist him a second time. Reluctantly, she crossed the room and sat on the end of the bed as he sat beside her. She pulled her knees up so her feet rested on the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms tightly around her legs.  
“Wow, that’s some closed body language.” Chris leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He stroked his beard before turning his eyes back to her. “First of all, tell me how you betrayed me.”  
Harvey closed her eyes, shaking her head. “It’s nothing. I was just being stupid.”  
“Oh no. Uh-uh.” He wagged his finger at her. “It’s something and you’re going to tell me.”  
“Chris, please…”  
“Tell me.”  
They were the hardest words she’d ever had to say. Her voice was so quiet she wondered if he’d even hear her. “I’m in love with you.”  
He sat back with a soft sigh, a slight frown deepening the line between his brows. “Harvey…”  
“You never told me what I should do if I fell in love with you!” she went on quickly, forestalling his disapproval. “I already had some feelings but I had them under control, then you expected me to sleep with you but not develop feelings and I thought I could. I did, for a while. But then it started to mean something. I love the time we share when we’re just cuddling on the couch or talking about mundane stuff. I thought sex would intensify that feeling of being close to you. Unfortunately, intimacy came with a price.”  
“Why did you keep sleeping with me?”  
God, she hated this. It was more terrible than she could have imagined, having to dig down and find the awful truth that she tried to hide, even from herself. “Because I didn’t want to lose you. Not in the sense that you’d lose interest in me if we weren’t having sex, but the…the version of you I had. I didn’t want you to put me the ever-increasing list of women you have to avoid.”  
“How could I ever avoid you?” he chided. “You’re the mother of my child.”  
“I didn’t want to be that person. You trusted me –”  
“About that. When did we have this conversation in which I cautioned you against falling in love with me?”  
“Well…I assumed it was implied under the terms of our friends with benefits arrangement. That’s usually what friends with benefits means. Friends, sex, no feelings.”  
Chris took a deep breath that he let out in a sigh. “Do you remember tenth-grade Homecoming? You were supposed to go the dance with that idiot Sammy Walker?”  
“He wasn’t an idiot,” Harvey said defensively, but she couldn’t hide her smile. “He dumped me right before the dance.”  
“About that…” he said in a tone that made her look at him sharply, “I did his math homework for a whole semester in return for him not taking you to the dance.”  
“What? But…but you were _terrible_ at math.”  
“That’s what you’re taking away from this?” He gave a snort of laughter. “I was still better at it than that idiot. It got him a passing grade and kept him on the team.” He turned to look at her. “I’ve been in love with you from the start, Harvey. From the first day I saw you by my locker. My little heart just stopped and I knew.”  
“You didn’t want him to take me to the dance?”  
“No.”  
“But you didn’t ask me. And you went with someone else!”  
He looked sheepish. “I’m sorry. I was at the beginning of my life as an asshole. I just didn’t want to see you dancing with someone else.”  
Her eyebrows arched in surprise. “Wow.”  
“It was supposed to be cute.”  
“It’s amazing how often ‘cute’ comes off as ‘creepy’.”  
He laughed and the sound made her smile, despite everything. “He’s in jail now, so, if you think about it, I did you a favour.”  
“Really? What did he do?”  
“Embezzled funds from his father’s business, I think.”  
Harvey shook her head, her eyes caught on his. “Why have you never said anything?”  
“Because you’re way out of my league. You’re way too smart to ever fall for a jerk like me.”  
“Apparently not,” she said drily.  
“When I was spending most of my time in LA and dating Kayla and generally being a massive dick, I’d think about you and how disapproving you’d be of my behaviour, how I was getting further and further away from the kind of guy you deserved to be with. Then Faye got pregnant and I thought that would be it for us. I never expected you to step up like you did. I knew that even if I lived to be a thousand, I’d never be good enough for you.”  
“Then why start up the friends with benefits thing?”  
“That was a sham from the start. I just wanted you. I didn’t think you’d even go for it. It felt so disingenuous to take you to bed like that but it seemed like the only way that I stood a chance. It made me feel terrible.”  
“And yet you’ve managed to circumnavigate your guilt all this time.”  
“As have you,” he said, flashing her a smile.  
She inclined her head. “Touché.” To her surprise, she felt tears stinging her eyes. “Chris…you’ve hidden this well, I never thought…”  
“I think, sometimes, you’ve seen it but not recognised it.”  
She thought back to all of the times she’d seen something inexplicable that she couldn’t identify in his expression. “Oh my god…”  
“I know I should have told you, I—”  
“No, hang on.” She got to her feet, pacing up and down in front of the bed. “This doesn’t make any sense. If you’ve been in love with me for twenty-three years, why were you so angry about the pregnancy test?”  
“I wasn’t angry. It felt like something you would tell me about but you hadn’t, and I wondered why. More than that, it made me realise how much I want all that with you. All I could think about when I saw it there in your bag was how I’d feel if you told me you were pregnant and I got so stupidly excited that when I realised you weren’t...crushing disappointment. I know I didn’t deal with it very well.”  
She raised her eyebrows. “There’s an understatement.”  
“I’m sorry.”  
“Do you know how painful it’s been to have to sit next to you every day and think that you hate the thought of me being pregnant so much that you can’t even bring yourself to look at me?”  
“No! Oh, sweetheart, is that what you’ve been thinking?” Chris looked appalled, then hung his head. “The real reason isn’t much better. It’s because of Guy.”  
She looked at him, mouth hanging open. “Guy?”  
“Guy,” he nodded.  
“Guy who I never even had a date with?”  
“Yes, that Guy.”  
Harvey looked at him. “You’re such an idiot.”  
“I know.”  
“What did Guy, a complete stranger, do to you that made you not speak to me, your best friend, for three fucking weeks?”  
Chris looked up at her, his new buzzcut somehow accentuating his puppy-dog gaze. “When I come over to look after Belle when you’re going to work and you’re saying goodbye, I always imagine some other dude being there to kiss you goodbye, or to hug you from behind while you drink your coffee. I’m always scared that you’ll meet the right person and settle down and it’ll be too late for me.”  
“And what does that have to do with Guy?”  
“He’s exactly the kind of dude I pictured kissing you goodbye.”  
“Shouldn’t that have propelled you into action? Please don’t date him, Harvey, I love you?”  
“I’ve seen how much all of this has affected you. I’ve watched you break over and over again. It didn’t seem fair to burden you with my feelings on top of everything else we’ve got going on.”  
Harvey pushed her fingers into her hair only to encounter plush stubble. “Fuck.”  
“I’ve always thought you were beautiful but I’ve never seen you look as stunning as you do right now. You really need to look in the mirror.”  
She shook her head. “I need a drink. Do you want one?”  
“I can’t.” He smiled ruefully.  
“Oh shit.” She dropped back down on the bed beside him. “I’m sorry, it completely slipped my mind. How are you feeling?”  
“Scared. Excited. At times it’s seemed like tomorrow would never come and at others, it’s felt like time is passing far too quickly. I don’t care what happens to me as long as everything goes smoothly for Belle.”  
“I care what happens to you,” she said quietly, holding out her hand for his. “What time is your appointment? Do you want me to pick you up afterwards?”  
He put his hand in hers. “One o’clock. Scott’s going to pick me up and spend the night. You should stay with Belle.”  
She nodded. “She wants me to shave her hair off tomorrow.”  
“I figured.”  
“Can you come with me in the morning? We can do it together?”  
“Of course.”  
They were quiet for a while. Harvey tried to process everything that had happened, all that had been said. She shook her head in disbelief. “Twenty-three years, Chris. It’s insane. You couldn’t find a single opportunity to tell me how you felt?”  
“I’ve told you I love you a million times.”  
“That doesn’t count! I didn’t know you meant it like that.”  
“You could have said something, too.”  
“I know, but it makes me feel better to blame you.” She dodged his flick to her nose, laughing softly. “A part of me wasn’t sure if I even wanted you. This whole thing has made me question if being involved with you is worth the constant interference and the speculation and being scrutinised by your fans.”  
He looked sad. “And is it?”  
“I know you’ll protect us, Chris. It’s what you’ve always done. I was, and still am, terrified of losing you. I would be devastated if we lost our friendship.”   
“I don’t think that could ever happen. No matter how crazy things have gotten, you’ve never treated me any differently. Even if you weren’t Belle’s mom and even if I hadn’t been hopelessly in love with you all that time, you fell in love with _me_. Not with _Captain America_ or the lifestyle I could give you. You loved me before I was someone.”  
“You’ve always been someone to me.”  
His smile slowly turned into a grin and he lifted his hand to brush his thumb across her cheek. “These last few weeks have shown me how little I want to be without you. You and Belle, you’re everything to me and I want us to be a family. A real, official family. Not a secret that stays tucked away forever.”  
She became aware that her heart was beating fast and erratically. “What are you saying?”  
“I want us to live together. And then we could get married, if you feel so inclined. Have another couple of kids. I think Belle’s going to make a great big sister. Maybe get another dog. I really want to get her a puppy when this is all over. Oh, and we can get one of those big—”  
Harvey kissed him. It took her a moment to realise the emotion coursing through her was happiness. It had been a long time since she’d felt it and she didn’t think she’d ever had so much of it. It seemed to be coming out of her pores as her body struggled to cope with the overflow. Tears leaked from her eyes but for once she wasn’t sad or scared or angry. When they broke apart, she was breathless and delirious.  
He pulled her closer to him, resting his forehead against hers. “When I’m with you, I feel whole and warm and content. I feel peaceful and normal. I can be myself. I’ve tried so hard to find those feelings with other people but I can’t because it’s you that makes me feel that way. I’m never going to find this with anyone else.” He wiped her tears away. “I love you, Lucy…my beautiful Lucy.”  
Her breath hitched in her throat at the unfamiliar sound of his voice saying her name. “I love you, too.”  
“Do you still want me to go?” He pointed at the door, making to get up.  
She rolled her eyes, pulling him back beside her. “You’re such a dork.”  
“Yes,” he agreed, smiling, his mouth tantalisingly close to hers, “but I’m your dork.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Day -1**  
  
“Sweetheart, come and sit down so I can brush your hair.”  
“I’m scared I’m going to look ugly.”  
Harvey closed her eyes, just for a second. It had taken most of the night for her to look at herself in the mirror, even with Chris’s constant reassurances. And he was right, her fears weren’t justified. It wasn’t horrendous, only different. Her eyes looked bigger and her bone structure more pronounced. She wore a hat as she and Chris wanted to surprise Belle with their matching haircuts but she wasn’t going to cover her head and be ashamed, otherwise what was the point? “Belle-Belle, you could never be ugly even if you fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Now come and sit down. Your father wants to be here for this but he has to go to the hospital soon to get ready for his operation.”  
“Is he okay? Has he changed his mind? Is that why he’s not here?”  
“Don’t be silly. He’s just giving us a few moments to talk. As for changing his mind,” she laughed, “there’s more chance of the sun being made of Jell-O. He’s a little nervous but he can’t wait for tomorrow and your rebirthday.”  
The concept of transplant day being a rebirth experience seemed to be universal. Harvey saw it described that way everywhere she looked. Even the doctors and nurses encouraged it. Belle, having missed her own birthday, was all for having another one. There wasn’t a lot they could do but she planned on putting up a few decorations and had finished the messages from Belle’s friends that she’d started back in December. She wanted to do everything later that night when Belle was asleep so she would be surprised when she woke up.  
Once Belle was settled on the chair, Harvey picked up the brush. She was surprised at how smoothly the brush went through after the first couple of strokes. “Did you brush your hair last night?”  
“Nana did it for me.”  
She felt a pang for Lisa, for all the years she’d missed brushing her granddaughter’s hair. Was it her imagination or was there more hair on the brush than usual? “Tell me how you’re feeling about today.”  
“I’m okay. I’ve seen pictures of the radiotherapy machine and Mel told me that it will take longer to get from here to the machine than it will take for the treatment. I’m just happy I don’t need any more ATG.”  
“So am I, muffin.” Harvey began to gather Belle’s hair up into a ponytail. She made sure to feel the weight of it in her hand, the softness and how thick it was. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t cry. The last thing she wanted to do was upset Belle at an already sensitive time. She closed her eyes again, trying to imagine they were in the kitchen getting ready for school. “What are you going to do after your treatment?”  
Belle told her about all of the videos she wanted to catch up on and how Chris had set her iPad up with various streaming services so she could watch whatever took her fancy. Harvey pulled a hairband from her wrist and tied the ponytail, then slowly began to braid, as carefully and neatly as she could with trembling fingers.  
“Are you okay, Mom?”  
“Hmm?”  
“Last night. Nana said you were tired but you were upset.”  
“It’s difficult to watch you going through all of this. It got on top of me. I’m feeling much better today. In fact, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”  
“What is it?”  
“I was wondering how you feel about going to live with Chris once you get out of here. He wants you to choose your bedroom and tell him how you want it decorated. He’ll make it beautiful for you.”  
“Live with him…all the time?”  
Harvey heard the hesitation in her voice and thought twice about pretending she would be living with him alone. “Yes, all the time.”  
“But…”  
“Oh, I’ll be there, too. Did I forget to mention that?”  
She turned around to frown at Harvey. “We’re going to live with my dad? What about our house?”  
“We’ll sell it. Chris’s house will be our house. Our home.”  
“Wait, Mom, I’m confused…”  
Harvey tied off the end of the braid and walked around the chair to crouch in front of Belle. “Why did you send Chris to see me last night?”  
“I was worried. You were sad.”  
“And?”  
She shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m not sure.”  
“You wanted me to tell him I love him, right?”  
“Yeah. I just thought if he knew then you’d be able to fix things.”  
“Well, I told him.” She watched her daughter’s eyes light up. “And everything’s okay now. In fact, he told me that he loves me too.”  
Her blue eyes grew wider with delight. “Mom! That’s amazing!”  
She couldn’t help but smile. “He wants us to go and live with him. Right away. But I’ll only do it if it’s okay with you. If you’re not ready, we can stay in our house and carry on as normal until you are.”  
“No, Mom, I’m ready. So, are you guys like, getting married?”  
Harvey nodded. “I think so. We both want to. Would you like that?”  
“Yes! Can I be your bridesmaid?”  
She laughed softly, “I think that’s a given.”  
“I told you you should tell him.”  
“Yes, you did, muffin. And even though I would prefer it if we kept the parameters of our parent/child relationship with me as the parent worrying about you, the child, I appreciate you sending Chris over last night. All we need now is for you to get better and come home.”  
“Can I have the blue room?”  
“You can have any room you like,” Chris said, walking into the room with a broad grin on his face.  
Harvey smiled and got to her feet. “Come on then, let’s get this done.”  
“Are you ready, sweet pea?” Chris pulled up another chair and sat beside Belle, taking her hand in his.  
Harvey put a plastic cape around Belle’s shoulders. She took a deep breath, picking up the scissors. “Last chance to change your mind.”  
“Just do it, Mom.”  
She took hold of the braid and carefully cut just above the band, snipping through the thick bundle of hair until it came away in her hand. She swallowed hard but held up. “There.”  
Belle took it in her hands, looking at it sadly. There was definitely a hint of chin wobble but Harvey could see she was trying hard not to cry. “It’s heavier than I thought.”  
“We can give it to Diane, the lady who’s going to make your wig,” Chris said. “Maybe she’ll be able to put some of your own hair into it.”  
She perked up a little. “Really? Do you think she can do that?”  
“I’ll ask her.”  
Harvey moved behind the chair again and picked up the clippers. It was as if her body were applying the brakes, she had to force herself to turn them on and begin cutting. Chris had offered to do it but she’d said no. She always did Belle’s hair.  
By the time she finished, she could barely see. Her eyes ached with the effort of not dissolving into tears. She brushed the loose hairs from Belle’s neck and took off the cape.  
Chris picked up the hand mirror and gave it face down to Belle. “It really suits you. I promise.”  
Belle lifted the mirror to look at herself. She gasped, touching her fingers to her scalp, and promptly burst into tears. Harvey hurriedly took off her hat and Belle’s face went from crumpled tears to slack-jawed shock. “Mom! Your hair!”  
She crouched down beside the chair, letting Belle stroke her hand over her head. “It’s just hair, muffin. We don’t even need it now we’ve invented hats.”  
“It’s so soft.”  
“And look.” Harvey nodded at Chris as he took his cap off.  
“Oh my god!” Belle giggled and sobbed at the same time.  
“You look gorgeous.”  
She sniffled, turning to Harvey for a second opinion. “_Tu es belle_.”  
“I can’t believe you both did that.”  
Chris wrapped his arms around them both. “We’re a family. We’ve got to stick together. But right now, I have to go and have all my bone marrow sucked out so we can make you better!”  
“Will you call us later so we know you’re okay?”  
“I will but Uncle Scott is going to call you just as soon as the procedure is over. I want you to take it easy today, get plenty of rest, okay?” He kissed her forehead and got to his feet to pull Harvey into his arms. “I really have to go but I don’t want to leave you both.”  
“We’ll be fine,” she assured him, pulling back slightly to look into his eyes. “Just get through it safely and come back to us tomorrow.”  
“I’ll call you later.” He kissed her. “I love you.”  
“I love you.” She watched him go with a smile of her own. It felt so good to tell him she loved him and for him to know she really meant it.  
  
  
**Day 0**  
  
Harvey and Belle didn’t have a great start to the day. After Belle had fallen asleep the previous night, Harvey had put up the messages from her friends and hung ‘Happy Re-Birthday’ decorations across the walls and around the bed. There had also been a fresh fall of snow overnight. Belle read all of the messages without comment before going to stand in front of the window.  
“What’s wrong, muffin?” Harvey asked gently, trying to mask her own disappointment.  
“I want to go outside. I want to play in the snow. I want my friends. I’m fed up with being stuck inside and feeling so bad all the time.”  
“It must be very frustrating to have to stay in one room for so long. I know it would be nice if your friends could come and visit but it’s too much of a risk.”  
“One hundred days, Mom. That’s how long I have to be on my own all the time. It’s over three months!”  
“How can we make it better?”  
“Can’t we go to the beach house like we were going to before I got sick?”  
Harvey shook her head. “No. That’s not possible.”  
Tears welled in Belle’s eyes. “But it’s not fair!”  
“None of this is fair. I know that. It’s not fair that any child should have to go through what you’ve been going through. But this is where we are, Belle, and we can’t change it. Hopefully, today is the start of your new life. One hundred days is nothing compared to the years and years you have ahead of you when you get better.”  
“What if I don’t get better? What if the transplant doesn’t work and I reject it?”  
She took a deep breath, thinking carefully before she spoke. “That is a possibility and one that we’ve talked about. We’ll find you a different donor and try again. But there’s a good chance that this transplant will work and you will start to feel better very soon. And once your neutrophil count goes up, you can come home and maybe you won’t feel so isolated when you’ve got your own things around you.”  
Belle climbed back into bed, turned her back on Harvey and pulled up her covers. Harvey sighed. Part of her wanted to cheer Belle up but mostly she wanted to let her wallow her feelings for a while. For the most part, she’d accepted everything that had happened to her with good grace and had been exceptionally brave. It would benefit her to rant and rage about how unfair it was. Hadn’t both she and Chris done exactly the same?  
“Mom?”  
“Yes?”  
“Can you leave me alone for a while?”  
“Sure,” Harvey said lightly, trying to pretend it didn’t hurt just a little. “You can message me when you feel up to visitors.”  
Harvey took herself up to the cafeteria, bought some breakfast and went back to sit in the relatives’ room. She sent Chris a message to let him know where she was then sat back with her book while she ate.  
He arrived not long after, limping slightly but looking otherwise unscathed. “Hey, sweetheart. What are you doing in here?”  
“Belle wants to be alone. I don’t think she’s feeling great this morning. She wants out.”  
“Poor kid. I can’t imagine what it’s like being confined to one room. I brought some snacks and I got Disney to send a copy of Toy Story 4.”  
“Wow! She is going to love you. It’s about time your job came with some perks!”  
“How are you?” He bent to kiss her and then sat gingerly beside her, leaning on his right side.  
“Never mind me, how you are? Are you sore?”  
“Yeah, a little but they gave me some amazing painkillers.”  
“Where’s Scott? I thought he was chauffeuring you around?”  
“He went to run some errands seeing as he’s not allowed to visit today. He’ll get a ride home with my mom later so you can drive us home.”  
“Belle’s really unhappy. I put all of her messages up on the wall and decorated the room but she didn’t even crack a smile.”  
Chris grimaced. “She’s been through a lot…”  
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been telling myself. I guess she’s reached her breaking point. That didn’t stop it hurting when she sent me out of the room though.”  
“She’s just like you, Lucy. She doesn’t like to show weakness. Nurture over nature.”  
“Are you always going to call me Lucy now?”  
“I think so.” He lifted a hand to stroke her cheek. He smiled, then frowned. “Are you okay? Are you happy?”  
“I’m unbearably happy,” she said, smoothing his worried frown with her fingers, “in a completely bearable way.”  
His answering smile was pure relief. “I know we’ve been playing at having a relationship for years but it’s real now. I don’t want you to do anything you’re not ready for. I don’t want to move too fast.”  
“Chris, there are glaciers moving faster than us. Are _you_ happy?”  
He tilted his forehead against hers. “What kind of dumbass question is that?”  
She laughed, rubbing her nose against his. “I still feel scared for Belle and I’m worried and anxious about the road we have ahead of us. I feel almost guilty about having something to be happy about.”  
“Nobody’s expecting sackcloth and ashes, sweetheart. I know our lives are on hold indefinitely but we’re allowed moments of happiness. We get to enjoy each other, to be happy together.”  
They both looked up as the door opened and Mel’s head appeared, shortly followed by the rest of her when she saw them huddled together on the couch. “There you are. Belle said she wasn’t feeling up to visitors and she thought you’d gone home!”  
Harvey rolled her eyes. “I told her to message me when she wanted me to go back in there. As if we’d go home today of all days!”  
“That’s what I told her. The bone marrow has arrived, we’re just waiting for Doctor Avery to come down to oversee the procedure. I think Belle’s ready for some company.”  
Belle sat up in bed, already hooked up to a bag of fluids. She smiled as they walked in but was still very subdued and not as excitable as usual. “Hi Mom, Chris,” she said glumly.  
“What’s the matter, sweet pea?”  
She shrugged, holding her arms up to hug him. “I don’t feel great today.”  
“It’s hardly surprising. Your body has been through so much.  
“Grandma and Grandpa and Nana are all on their way but we don’t have to have a big day if you don’t feel up to it,” Harvey said. “We can send them home.”  
“Can it just be us for a little while? To see how I feel?”  
“Sure,” Chris said. “I think Mel wants to wait at least an hour or two before anyone else comes in anyway, in case you have a reaction.”  
“How was your operation?”  
“I slept through the whole thing,” he said, making her smile. “The doctor said it was all good and I feel fine.”  
Mel arrived with Doctor Avery, the transplant doctor, and a specialist transplant nurse they’d met a few times, named Rachel.  
Doctor Avery rubbed his hands together. “Okay, Belle Evans-Brooks. Are you ready?”  
“Yes!”  
“Rachel here is going to hang around for a little while and make sure it’s all going smoothly but you know the drill. Any side effects, you let us know immediately. It shouldn’t feel any different to a blood transfusion.”  
In the end, the transplant was anticlimactic. After the first bag went through without a hitch, Rachel swapped it for the second bag and set up more fluids, then left them alone. Belle dozed on and off for a while before finally falling into a deep sleep. Chris went to the relatives’ room to tell their parents not to hang around leaving Harvey to silently watch the red fluid as it snaked along the tube and disappeared under the blankets.  
As relieved as she was that this day had arrived, and much faster than they could have hoped, she knew it wasn’t going to be an easy ride. They still had mountains to climb. Even if Belle made a full recovery, it was never going to go away. The fear of a relapse, of rejection, of some other disease, it would always be there, for the rest of their lives. She had wished over and over that things would go back to normal but she realised now that there was no going back. They had to adjust and adapt to a new normal. A lifetime of hospital visits and precautionary admissions, of questioning every bruise or cough or sneeze.  
It took six hours for Belle to receive three bags of her father’s bone marrow. Towards the end, Belle perked up enough to sit up a little and talk about what colour she wanted her new bedroom decorated, pulling up examples on her iPad to show them. Once she’d been unhooked from the various monitors and they were alone, she got out of bed, walking around the room a couple of times. “I don’t feel any different.”  
“It takes a while to kick in,” Chris laughed.  
Belle turned to look at him. “Thank you, by the way. For giving me your bone marrow.”  
“Oh, sweet pea. You don’t have to thank me.” His voice was choked. “I love you so much.”  
“I love you, too, Daddy.”  
She said it so casually that it took a moment for it to sink in. Harvey froze, her eyes on his face. Tears instantly welled in his eyes. He wrapped Belle in his arms, enveloping her in a hug so tight he lifted her feet from the floor. For a moment, Harvey was transported back to the day she’d brought her home and she’d watched Chris cry as he held his daughter for the first time.  
As she had that night, Harvey quietly left the room, closing the door gently behind her. It was their moment and she didn’t need to be there. Chris had waited a lifetime to hear those words. For the second time in just a handful of hours, she cried tears of happiness and relief. It didn’t matter what the future threw at them, she knew they would be okay. They had each other. They were a family, at last.


	21. Chapter 21

**Christmas Eve 2019**  
  
“Belle!” Harvey shouted up the stairs. “Come on! Your dad will be back in a minute.”  
“I’m coming!” Belle yelled back.  
Harvey went into the kitchen to double-check she’d packed all of Belle’s meds, Dodger trailing close behind her. He seemed to sense that something was different and seemed reluctant to let her out of his sight. She crouched down beside him, stroking his ears. “Who’s a good boy? Hmmm?”  
“Is it me?”  
She looked up. Chris had just walked in the door and had snow in his hair and on the shoulders of his coat. He looked completely adorable and the sight of him gave her a jolt in her stomach. Sometimes she still couldn’t believe he was really hers. She smiled up at him. “It’s definitely not you.”  
He chuckled, putting a bundle of mail on the counter. “Are we good to go?”  
She stood, giving herself a headrush that she tried to hide. “Madam’s still not ready yet.”  
He frowned. “You okay?”  
“Yeah! You?”  
“Hmm,” he grumbled, pulling her into his arms. “Something’s off. Are you feeling okay?”  
Her mouth lifted in a small smile. She knew he was concerned about her but she also understood that much of it was born from fear. “Never better.” She smiled up into his concerned face and gave him a squeeze. “I promise.”  
“I’m going to put the dogs in the car, you light a fire under our daughter.”  
As he whistled for the dogs, Harvey went back to the stairs. “Belle, we’re leaving. You’ll have to go stay with Nana if you’re not ready. Bye!”  
“I’m coming!”  
“I have heard that four times this morning.”  
“I mean it this time,” she said, appearing at the top of the stairs, followed by the ball of black fluff that never left her side.  
They had taken Belle to the shelter on her one hundredth day post-transplant when her isolation had been lifted. He’d been a tiny little puppy that could fit in the palm of Chris’s hand. It was impossible to tell which way around he was unless his tongue was sticking out and he bullied Dodger mercilessly despite being a fifth of his size but she’d fallen head over heels in love with him, named him Lumiere and an unbreakable bond had been formed.  
“Your dad needs to put Lumiere in his crate, take him outside quickly.” She watched Belle scoop up the little dog and run outside. Harvey could see the transition from child to teenager taking a firm hold. She was taller, filling out a little, and her face had lost that childish roundness. It was bittersweet to see.  
“Lucy?”   
Chris’s voice broke through her reverie, making her jump. She spun around to look at him. “Chris?”  
“You can daydream in the car,” he chided softly, rolling his eyes affectionately. “Come on.”  
“Belle doesn’t have her coat or bag. I sent her out with Lumiere.”  
“Then why is she sitting in the backseat with her seatbelt on?!”  
She laughed, picking up the coat and the bag and pushing them into his arms. “She’s pretty much purely your DNA by now, so…”  
“Nurture over nature,” he countered, putting his hand in the small of her back to guide her firmly out of the door.  
They were heading to Cape Cod for their first Christmas together. Harvey had been surprised when Chris suggested it. He usually spent the day with his family and she would have been absolutely fine with doing just that. She hadn’t spent a Christmas with her own family since she left home. But he’d asked her if her parents would let them use the beach house so they could spend a few days there, just the three of them and the dogs.  
When they arrived, Belle and Lumiere disappeared upstairs to her bedroom and Dodger faithfully followed Harvey through the house as she opened the shutters and turned on the heat, leaving Chris to unload the car. It had been snowing on and off for a couple of weeks and the blanket covering the beach at the back of the house was pristine and undisturbed. For now.  
Harvey stood at the windows, looking out at the steely grey ocean waves as they rolled on and off of the beach. It had been a year since she’d last stood there and so much had happened. Belle had almost died and now she was dancing again and ready to return to school after the holidays. Even though they couldn’t relax yet, every day was another day further away from her body rejecting the transplant, another jump in her counts, another medication to stop taking.  
She flinched in surprise as Chris’s arms snaked around her waist, pulling her back against his chest. “Tell me what’s wrong, Lucy,” he murmured, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Something’s different, I just know it.”  
She smiled, shaking her head. “Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart. I promise. I’m just glad to be so close to the end of this year, this decade, and to be starting a new one with you.”  
He turned his face into her neck, kissing her nosily and making her giggle and squirm. “You always know how to flatter me. I’m going to take Belle to get the tree. Do we need anything?”  
“No. We have enough food to feed an army. I’ll make a start on putting everything away.”  
By the time they returned, carrying a large spruce between them, Chris far too close to the middle for Belle to be bearing much of the weight, she had put all of the groceries away, made gingerbread dough and put a casserole in the oven for dinner. Chris laid and lit a fire, turned on the Christmas tunes and the three of them spent a wonderful afternoon decorating the tree and stringing up lights everywhere, with Dodger and Lumiere watching from the hearthrug.  
Once the living room was deemed to be Christmassy enough, Belle took Dodger and Lumiere out to play on the beach and Harvey settled down on the couch to watch Chris tidy up the packaging from the decorations. She stretched out her weary muscles. She’d been awake since five that morning, packing her bags and checking things off of lists.  
“Why don’t you go upstairs and nap for a while? I can see you’re exhausted.”  
“I’m comfy here and it’s too late to nap now. I won’t sleep tonight and then Santa won’t come.”  
He laughed, pushed the last of the bubble wrap into the box and went to sit beside her. “I’ve got a present for you.”  
She bit her lip as she looked up at him, one eyebrow arched. “I bet you have.”  
“Stop!” he chuckled, reaching into his pocket and handing her a small velvet pouch. “Happy anniversary.”  
“Gosh, what is it now? Twenty-five years?”  
“Eight weeks.”  
“It feels like twenty-five years,” she grumbled. Every week since they’d been married, he’d bought her an anniversary gift. She’d asked how long he planned to keep it up for but he’d just shrugged enigmatically. The pouch felt heavy and she opened the drawstring, upending it into her palm. It was a beautiful little silver dog with shiny black onyx eyes and nose. “Oh, Chris, he’s gorgeous.”  
“I saw him in the window and I couldn’t resist him.”  
“Much how I feel about you.” She pressed a kiss to his lips. “Thank you. Have I ever told you how much I love being married to you?”  
“No. You’ve never mentioned it.”  
“Well, I do. It’s the best feeling in the world.”  
“Lucy…”  
“What?”  
“I think I know what’s up with you. I’ve been trying not to say anything because I figure you’re going to surprise me in some way.”  
Her heart sank. “Chris…”  
“I’m sorry! I’ve been trying to wait and I know it’s probably going to be tomorrow but look at this. We’ve got the lights and the fire and it’s snowing. It’s so romantic and we’ve got a rare few minutes alone. I want to know for sure so I can fully enjoy this moment.”  
She sighed, moving closer to him so he wrapped an arm around her as she nestled against his chest. She’d thought of a million and one ways to tell him and hadn’t been able to decide. Maybe this was the best, a moment of peace in their hectic lives. She lifted her sweater a little and took his hand, placing it on her stomach. She felt him stiffen slightly, heard him gasp, then his arms tightened around her and she felt safe, and happy, and loved. The perfect moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to take a minute to thank everyone who has read this and will ever read it. It’s only my second time writing a chaptered story and the first time I’ve been happy with the end result. Your support, comments, feedback, help and general awesomeness are the whole reason I’m sitting here right now. I couldn’t have done it without you. I don’t always reply to comments because I feel like I’m saying the same thing over and over but, hand on my heart, I appreciate every single interaction and it really does mean the world to me.


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